キュウリの巻きひげに生じる反転らせん構造の力学解析

抄録

The helical coiling of plant tendrils has fascinated scientists for centuries, yet the formation process of the inverted helical structure is still unclear and further investigation is required. In this study, we investigate the formation mechanism of the helical structure from experiments and finite element analysis. First, we measured the geometry of the tendrils using photogrammetry technique. This analysis yields a distribution of curvature and torsion from a least square fitting of a space curve to the point cloud data. The formation process is then estimated from inhomogeneous evolution of the curvature and torsion. We also conducted finite element analysis on a Riemannian manifold. This analysis reveals that the formation of helical structure is explained by development of internal curvature.