Wednesday, March 20, 2013

1303.4269 (Giuseppe Puglisi et al.)

Cohesion-decohesion asymmetry in geckos    [PDF]

Giuseppe Puglisi, Lev Truskinovsky
Lizards and insects can strongly attach to walls and then detach applying negligible additional forces. We propose a simple mechanical model of this phenomenon which implies active muscle control. We show that the detachment force may depend not only on the properties of the adhesive units, but also on the elastic interaction among these units. By regulating the scale of such cooperative interaction, the organism can actively switch between two modes of adhesion: delocalized (pull off) and localized (peeling).
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.4269

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