title: Theoretical and experimental analysis of a thin elastic cylindrical tube acting as a non-Hookean spring.
abstract: We analyze the (large) deformation and energy of a thin elastic cylindrical tube compressed between two plates parallel to the tube axis. The deformation is studied theoretically using a numerical calculation and the variational approach. The results are used to interpret the experimental data obtained by pressing tubes made from plastic-foil transparencies. We obtain a universal scaling relation that characterizes the response of the tube. Our results may serve as a benchmark for the application of variational methods to thin-walled nanoscale systems in order to obtain functional relations between the energy and the deformation.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Bijenička cesta 46, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Šiber
authors.forename: Hrvoje
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Buljan