Publications related to Knot theory

Capsizing due to friction-induced twist in the failure of stopper knots

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Paul Johanns

We investigate the failure mechanism of stopper knots, with a particular focus on the figure -8 knot as a representative example. Stopper knots are widely used in climbing, sailing, racket stringing, and sewing to maintain tension in ropes, strings, or thr ...

Elsevier2024

Computational Exploration of Multistable Elastic Knots

Mark Pauly, Michele Vidulis, Yingying Ren

We present an algorithmic approach to discover, study, and design multistable elastic knots. Elastic knots are physical realizations of closed curves embedded in 3-space. When endowed with the material thickness and bending resistance of a physical wire, t ...

2023

Mechanics of Physical Knots: From Filaments in Contact to Surgical Suturing

Paul Johanns

In this thesis, we study the mechanics of tight physical knots. Knots are omnipresent in surgery, climbing, and sailing, with disastrous consequences when the filament or the rope fails to perform its function. Even if the importance of mechanical analysis ...

EPFL2023

The strength of surgical knots involves a critical interplay between friction and elastoplasticity

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Paul Johanns, Paul Grandgeorge, Changyeob Baek

Knots are the weakest link in surgical sutures, serving as mechanical ligatures between filaments. Exceeding their safe operational limits can cause fatal complications. The empirical nature of present guidelines calls for a predictive understanding of the ...

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE2023

Exploring the inner workings of the clove hitch knot

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Paul Johanns, Tomohiko Sano, Paul Grandgeorge, Changyeob Baek

We perform a combined experimental and computational investigation of the clove hitch knot. We develop a physical model for the clove hitch by tying an elastic rod onto a rigid cylinder. In the experiments, we characterize the mechanical performance, geome ...

ELSEVIER2022

The shapes of physical trefoil knots

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, John Maddocks, Tomohiko Sano, Paul Johanns, Changyeob Baek, Paul Grandgeorge

We perform a compare-and-contrast investigation between the equilibrium shapes of physical and ideal trefoil knots, both in closed and open configurations. Ideal knots are purely geometric abstractions for the tightest configuration tied in a perfectly fle ...

2021

On The Singular Set In The Thin Obstacle Problem: Higher-Order Blow-Ups And The Very Thin Obstacle Problem

Xavier Fernandez-Real Girona

We consider the singular set in the thin obstacle problem with weight vertical bar x(n +1)vertical bar(a) for a epsilon (-1, 1), which arises as the local extension of the obstacle problem for the fractional Laplacian (a nonlocal problem). We develop a ref ...

MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE PUBL2021

Finite Element Modeling of Tight Elastic Knots

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Tomohiko Sano, Paul Johanns, Changyeob Baek, Paul Grandgeorge

We present a methodology to simulate the mechanics of knots in elastic rods using geometrically nonlinear, full three-dimensional (3D) finite element analysis. We focus on the mechanical behavior of knots in tight configurations, for which the full 3D defo ...

2020

Experimenting with knots

Giovanni Dietler

Knots are interesting objects to experiment since their topological properties are combined with mechanical properties, fluid mechanics or dynamical properties like unknotting under the excitation of the thermal energy. Knots play also a role in biology be ...

SPRINGER HEIDELBERG2019

Periodic Motion of Sedimenting Flexible Knots

Giovanni Dietler, Krishnan Thyagarajan, Andrzej Stasiak

We study the dynamics of knotted deformable closed chains sedimenting in a viscous fluid. We show experimentally that trefoil and other torus knots often attain a remarkably regular horizontal toroidal structure while sedimenting, with a number of intertwi ...

APS2018

On chirality of toroidal embeddings of polyhedral graphs

Senja Dominique Barthel

We investigate properties of spatial graphs on the standard torus. It is known that nontrivial embeddings of planar graphs in the torus contain a nontrivial knot or a non-split link due to [2, 3]. Building on this and using the chirality of torus knots and ...

World Scientific Publishing2017

Tuning knot abundance in semiflexible chains with crowders of different sizes: a Monte Carlo study of DNA chains

Giovanni Dietler

We use stochastic simulation techniques to sample the conformational space of linear semiflexible polymers in a crowded medium and study how the knotting properties depend on the crowder size and concentration. The abundance of physical knots in the chains ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2016

Mechanical form-finding of timber fabric structures

Seyed Sina Nabaei

How about fastening a knot? not with ropes... but with timber panels. Timber Fabric Structures (TFS) originate from such an inspiration. An architectural reinterpretation of fabric techniques (mainly braiding) using building scale timber panels to design ...

EPFL2014

Sedimentation of macroscopic rigid knots and its relation to gel electrophoretic mobility of DNA knots

Giovanni Dietler, Cédric Weber, Andrzej Stasiak, Mathias Carlen

We address the general question of the extent to which the hydrodynamic behaviour of microscopic freely fluctuating objects can be reproduced by macrosopic rigid objects. In particular, we compare the sedimentation speeds of knotted DNA molecules undergoin ...

Nature Publishing Group2013

Optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy by use of a multimode fiber

Demetri Psaltis, Christophe Moser, Salma Farahi, Emmanuel André Henri Bossy

We demonstrate Optical-Resolution Photoacoustic Microscopy (OR-PAM), where the optical field is focused and scanned using Digital Phase Conjugation through a multimode fiber. The focus is scanned across the field of view using digital means, and the acoust ...

American Institute of Physics2013

Long knots and maps between operads

Kathryn Hess Bellwald

We identify the space of tangentially straightened long knots in R^m, for m greater than or equal to 4, as the double loops on the space of derived operad maps from the associative operad into a version of the little m-disk operad. This verifies a conjectu ...

Geometry & Topology Publications2012

Fourier Approximation Of Symmetric Ideal Knots

Henryk Gerlach, Mathias Carlen

Enforcing a specific symmetry group on a curve, knotted or not, is not trivial using standard interpolations such as polygons or splines. For a prescribed symmetry group we present a symmetrization process based on a Fourier description of a knot. The pres ...

2012

Study of Topoisomerase-DNA Interaction Using Atomic Force Microscopy

Livan Bladimir Alonso Sarduy

The aim of this thesis was to explore the topoisomerase-DNA interactions using atomic force microscopy (AFM) in a liquid environment. Firstly, we present a programmable microcontroller-driven injection system for the exchange of an imaging medium while usi ...

EPFL2012

Tightening of DNA knots by supercoiling facilitates their unknotting by type II DNA topoisomerases

Giovanni Dietler, Andrzej Stasiak, Guillaume Witz

Using numerical simulations, we compare properties of knotted DNA molecules that are either torsionally relaxed or supercoiled. We observe that DNA supercoiling tightens knotted portions of DNA molecules and accentuates the difference in curvature between ...

2011

Computation and visualization of ideal knot shapes

Mathias Carlen

We investigate numerical simulations and visualizations of the problem of tying a knot in a piece of rope. The goal is to use the least possible rope of a fixed, prescribed radius to tie a particular knot, e.g. a trefoil, a figure eight, and so on. The rop ...

EPFL2010