Stable and unstable helices: soap films in cylindrical tubes

DOI10.1007/S00526-014-0813-YMaRDI QIDQ493222zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Brian Seguin, Eliot Fried

Publication date 11 September 2015

Published in Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.5362

zbMATH Keywords

area minimizationcylindrical tubeeigenvalue problemPlateau problemsoap films

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Estimates of eigenvalues in context of PDEs (35P15) Minimal surfaces and optimization (49Q05) Variational methods for eigenvalues of operators (49R05) Variational principles of physics (49S05)

Abstract: Cox & Jones recently devised and studied an interesting variant of the classical Plateau problem, a variant in which a helical soap film is confined to a cylindrical tube with circular cross-section. Through experiments, numerics, and some analysis, they found that the length and (inner) radius of the tube strongly influence the equilibrium shape of the confined soap film. In this paper, an area minimization problem associated with determining the shape of the film is formulated and analyzed to determine which surfaces are local minima. The connection between a functional inequality and the associated eigenvalue problem plays an important role in the analysis. For helical films, a more detailed analysis is carried out and stability conditions consistent with the experimental and numerical results of Cox & Jones are obtained.

Recommendations

• Stability of a helicoidal surface inside a cylinder with pinned diameters
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Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3870089 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3050131 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3061314 (Why is no real title available?)
• Instability of stretched and twisted soap films in a cylinder
• The Problem of Plateau for Two Contours

Cited in

(8)

• Instability of the wet X soap film
• Theoretical and experimental study of the stability of a soap film spanning a flexible loop
• Analysis of the shape hysteresis of a soap film supported by two circular rings
• Plateau's problem
• On a problem in the calculus of variations
• Instability of stretched and twisted soap films in a cylinder
• A Björling representation for Jacobi fields on minimal surfaces and soap film instabilities
• Stability analysis of helical soap films for the plateau problem confined to a cylindrical tube

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