Second-order phase transition and universality of self-buckled elastic slender columns

Abstract

Self-buckling is an interesting phenomenon that is easily found around us, either in nature or in objects made by human. Palm fronds which initially directed upward when they were short and turned into bending after appreciably longer is an example of the self-buckling phenomenon. We report here that the self-buckling of columns can be treated as a process of second-order phase transition by considering the straight column as “disorder state”, the bending column as “order state”, and the temperature as the inverse of column length. The “critical temperature” corresponds to the inverse of critical length for buckling, 1/Lcr, and the deviation angle made by column free end relative to vertical direction satisfies a scaling relationship with a scaling power of 0.485. Changing of the column geometry from the vertically upward to the bending state can be considered as a transition from disorder state to order state.