Research / Metamaterials

Snapping arches by curvature patterning

After Michał Zmyślony, Ammar Khan, John S. Biggins, “Snapping and switching of elastic arches with patterned preferred curvature”, Physical Review Research (2026), doi:10.1103/56f8-8gsx.

Against the author’s code
4 of 4 checks pass· see the checks
Against the paper’s figures
1 of 1 checks pass· see the checks

Research, not a design tool. Nothing here is an engineering result.

Change the width of a curved segment and move the threshold at which a shallow arch switches sides.

From Euler buckling to an equilibrium jump

A flat-clamped arch stores end shortening in its shape. A preferred-curvature pattern couples to its buckling modes. Equations (2) and (3), arXiv v2 pages 3–4, give the shallow-angle equilibrium and compression spectrum. We restrict this experiment to a centered rectangular pattern.

The production Stabileo 2D frame buckling solver computes 16 modes on 64 elements. A research layer projects the curvature onto these modes and solves the paper’s compression constraint. The same Rust code runs here as WASM and generates the replay.

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Validation and sources

At a stimulated width of 70%, the paper gives α/√ε = 21,52 (arXiv v2 page 3, following Eq. 2). The overlay is regenerated from the authors’ shallow-angle software in Zenodo record 18256271, licensed CC-BY-4.0. It is a numerical reference, not experimental validation.

Published threshold at 70% width
21,52
Stabileo modes + shallow-arch equations
21,51730
Zenodo curve: maximum relative error
0,1821% · Tolerance 0,3%
Mesh and mode refinement
0,04% · Tolerance 0,1%
First Euler load
0,0000129% · Tolerance 0,001%
Second Euler load
0,00005393% · Tolerance 0,001%

Paper and supplementary equations · Zenodo data and software

This is a shallow, inextensible equilibrium model. The jump connects equilibria; it does not simulate snap dynamics or reproduce laboratory measurements. Arc-length in the production engine rejects prescribed displacements and thermal loading, so it is not used for this curvature-driven path. Only centered patterns and small end shortening are covered.

Cite this

Stabileo Research, “Snapping arches by curvature patterning”, reproduction of Michał Zmyślony, Ammar Khan, John S. Biggins (2026), doi:10.1103/56f8-8gsx. Implementation: research/mechanics/biggins-2026 at commit 8068cd16ea2c. Engine: the Stabileo engine at the same commit. Permanent links to this exact build are planned.