Haptic sensing through disordered buckling of slender structures

Slender structures, when placed under compression, will bend and buckle. This is, however, only true for inextensible or vanishingly thin structures. Soft or finitely slender structures will act like springs under small compressions, before they bend and buckle. Compressing slender structures of different thresholds together will produce a disordered composite buckling response that is closely related to the level of variability in structure slenderness. We will discuss experimental results and theoretical modeling using Kirchhoff rod theory to learn more about this intimate connection between geometry, material, and the responses of slender structures to compression.