Measuring flexural rigidity of mullite microfibers using magnetic droplets

Articles you may be interested in Direct measurement of shear properties of microfibers Rev. Noncontact quantitative spatial mapping of stress and flexural rigidity in thin membranes using a picosecond transient grating photoacoustic technique Displacement of droplets and deformation of thin liquid layers using flexural vibrations of structures. Influence of acoustic radiation pressure Flexural rigidity of many microfibers is known to deviate from the Bernoulli-Euler predictions that neglect shear deformations. We examine mullite microfibers formed by electrospinning of sol-gel precursors. The formed fibers have diameters smaller than 10 lm. A magnetic drop was placed on the free end of a dangling fiber, and the fiber was flexed by applying a non-uniform magnetic field. By applying different magnetic fields, we generated a series of different fiber profiles and filmed the process of fiber bending. Mullite microfibers were found to follow the Bernoulli-Euler predictions, and the shear deformations in the material were insignificant. This was confirmed by employing the Euler elastica model to describe the fiber profiles. The bending test provided a Young modulus of E ¼ 100 GPa, which appeared to be very close to that found from the tensile test.