Unpacking of a Crumpled Wire from Two-Dimensional Cavities

PLoS One. 2015 Jun 5;10(6):e0128568. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128568. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

The physics of tightly packed structures of a wire and other threadlike materials confined in cavities has been explored in recent years in connection with crumpled systems and a number of topics ranging from applications to DNA packing in viral capsids and surgical interventions with catheter to analogies with the electron gas at finite temperature and with theories of two-dimensional quantum gravity. When a long piece of wire is injected into two-dimensional cavities, it bends and originates in the jammed limit a series of closed structures that we call loops. In this work we study the extraction of a crumpled tightly packed wire from a circular cavity aiming to remove loops individually. The size of each removed loop, the maximum value of the force needed to unpack each loop, and the total length of the extracted wire were measured and related to an exponential growth and a mean field model consistent with the literature of crumpled wires. Scaling laws for this process are reported and the relationship between the processes of packing and unpacking of wire is commented upon.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Mechanical Phenomena
  • Models, Theoretical*

Grants and funding

This work was done with resources from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Programa Nacional de Cooperação Acadêmica (PROCAD), and Programa de Núcleos de Excelência (PRONEX), all Brazilian Government Agencies. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.