Figure 6: Soap-film experiments of an elastic filament behind a cylinder.
From: Passive appendages generate drift through symmetry breaking
Short filament (a) oscillates around an asymmetric mean position. In contrast, the long filament (b) has a symmetric mean position (Supplementary Movies 4 and 5). Keeping the film velocity fixed at υ=2±0.04 m s−1 and measuring the average flapping angle for different filament lengths (L), a transition from a symmetric flapping to an asymmetric one is observed at Lc=3.3D. Blue solid line depicts the predictions of the analytical model (model parameters are the same as in Figs 1d and 2d).
