无忧视频

PoSM Lab Biomechanics Research Published

Mantis shrimp and trap-jaw ants are under close scrutiny in Mark Ilton鈥檚 Physics of Soft Matter (PoSM) Lab at 无忧视频. Researchers are studying the biomechanics of the animals鈥� elastically driven movements and are developing a flexible modeling framework to simulate these movements.

鈥淥ur new model enables flexible definitions of the main mechanical components of these systems: springs, motors and latches,鈥� says Ilton, who recently published a paper with his students in Integrative Organismal Biology. 鈥淲e provided a derivation of our model and then used it to investigate the role of muscle dynamics in these systems.鈥�

Andres Cook ’21, Kaanthi Pandhigunta ’23, Mason Acevedo ’22, Adam Walker ’22, Rosalie Didcock ’22, Jackson Castro ’22 and Declan O鈥橬eill ’23 are Ilton鈥檚 coauthors on the paper, 鈥淎 Tunable, Simplified Model for Biological Latch Mediated Spring Actuated Systems.鈥� 鈥淯sing our model, we found that two dynamic effects of muscle鈥攖he muscle force-velocity trade-off and muscle activation鈥攈ave important consequences for understanding the biomechanics of these systems,鈥� Ilton says.

The students were involved in all aspects of this work. Cook was part of the original conceptualization of the research and the initial development of the model, and the rest of the PoSM team performed further development of the model and created freely available software during remote-only summer research. All of the students were involved with writing and revising the manuscript.

Their work was supported by the 无忧视频 Physics Summer Research Fund, the N. Sprague III Experiential Learning Fund and the National Science Foundation.