2005/08/25 by Basile Audoly, Sébastien Neukirch · 1 voice · 2 citations
Engineering · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #Advanced Surface Polishing Techniques #Fluid Dynamics and Thin Films
paper · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.95.095505
openalex publication_date 2005/08/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
When thin brittle rods such as dry spaghetti pasta are bent beyond their limit curvature, they often break into more than two pieces, typically three or four. With the aim of understanding these multiple breakings, we study the dynamics of a bent rod that is suddenly released at one end. We find that the sudden relaxation of the curvature at this end leads to a burst of flexural waves, whose dynamics are described by a self-similar solution with no adjustable parameters. These flexural waves locally increase the curvature in the rod, and we argue that this counterintuitive mechanism is responsible for the fragmentation of brittle rods under bending. A simple experiment supporting the claim is presented.