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Folds and loops
In this seminar, I will present two experimental situations involving the
confinement of elastic objects. First I will focus on the mechanical
response of a folded thin sheet. I will show that crease opening and face
bending give two competing contributions to the elastic energy, which
gives rise to a characteristic length scale governing the fold’s response.
Then I will present some results regarding the dynamical confinement of an
elastic rod in 2D. I will show that a naive geometric order parameter for
the order/disorder transition this system exhibits has a well defined
energy counterpart, paving the way to a complete statistical description.
