Morphing in Slender Structure

What determines how and when a slender structure changes shape, forms patterns, or jumps to a new stable state? Bending, buckling, wrinkling and snapping in slender structure are due to the non-trivial interaction between geometry and constitutive properties and unvealing those hidden rules will provide principles that guide the design of responsive, bio-inspired, and functional materials capable of harnessing instabilities and patterns for novel mechanical functionality. In a recent work (Simpkins et al., 2025), responds to open questions on the non-linear coupling between imperfection and oscillations in the dynamical evolution induced by bifurcations in indented arches, potentially to be generalized to any system sharing the same bifurcation landscape.