Surprising instabilities of simple elastic structures

In this chapter examples of structures buckling in tension are presented, where no compressed elements are present, slightly different from those previously proposed by the authors. These simple structures exhibit interesting postcritical behaviors; for instance, multiple configurations of vanishing external force are evidenced in one case. Flutter instability as induced by dry friction is considered in the Ziegler pendulum, with the same arrangement presented by Bigoni and Noselli. In this system, dynamical effects related to a heavy frictional constraint have been determined. The results show that these are negligible for the values of a constraint's inertia pertinent to the experimental setting, but may become interesting in other situations. The structures considered in the chapter can be combined to design flexible systems and artificial materials, which may find broad applications, even at the micro- and nanoscale. © ISTE Ltd 2014. All rights reserved.