Persistence of a pinch in a pipe

Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University - Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA 02138, USA

Corresponding author: lm@deas.harvard.edu

Received: 1 July 2006
Accepted: 14 December 2006

Abstract

The response of low-dimensional solid objects combines geometry and physics in unusual ways, exemplified in structures of great utility such as a thin-walled tube that is ubiquitous in nature and technology. Here we provide a consequence of this confluence of geometry and physics in tubular structures: our analysis shows that the persistence of a localized pinch in an elastic pipe whose effect decays as an oscillatory exponential with a persistence length that diverges as the thickness of the tube vanishes, which we confirm using simulations and simple experiments. The result is more a consequence of geometry than material properties, and is thus equally applicable to carbon nanotubes as it is to oil pipelines.