Stationary states and stability analysis in
slender elastic rods
New interesting challenges arise in the mechanics of slender elastic rods
with the burgeoning of new scientific fields such as soft materials,
nanotechnologies, stretchable electronics or even physical computer
animation. One of the common emerging concerns is the efficient
modeling of the very large deformations of these structures, often in
atypical surrounding environments. In this talk, I will present some
original and accessible numerical tools and models, based on a
dynamical system approach, to compute and follow the steady states
and stability of slender elastic rods. Notably, I will show the relevance
and performance of our methods in various mechanical problems, from
the self-oscillations of a nanowire in field emission to the physics of a
naturally curved elastic rod or the design of piezoelectric beams as
frequency multipliers.