Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Nonlinear Dynamics Of Filaments In Free Space And Fluids, Victoria Kelley

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The purpose of this paper is to study a straight rod, held at both ends, with a known twist and tension or compression. We study the stability of this steady state when the system is dominated either by inertia or drag. In order to do this, we first replicate the work of Goriely and Tabor to look at the case with inertia, without drag. After conducting the analysis for that case, we then apply their framework to perform a linear stability analysis of a model that is without inertia, but with hydrodynamic drag. Our motivation is the study of locomotion …