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FROM:
Fanlong Meng, Jeff Z.Y. Chen, Masao Doi and Zhongcan Ouyang,
“The phase diagram and radial collapse of an inflated soft tube under twist”, Soft Matter, Vol. 11, No. 35, pp 7046-7052, 2015, http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5SM01740H
ABSTRACT: When an inflated soft tube such as a cylindrical balloon is twisted, mechanical instability can arise and produces a kink-like radius collapsing in the middle of the tube. Here this phenomenon inspires us to theoretically analyze a standard non-linear model of rubber elasticity for soft tubes. We show that there exists a critical pressure beyond which such instability arises. The critical pressure depends on the elastic properties of the tube material and the geometric dimensions of the thin-walled tube. This general theory covers a large class of soft materials and explains why twist-induced collapsing is observable in soft and thin elastic tubes such as balloons, but not in hard and thick tubes such as water hoses.
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