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. 2015 Jun 11;5:10768. doi: 10.1038/srep10768

Figure 2. Pneumatic actuation of PDMS microtubes.

Figure 2

Superimposed images of pneumatically actuated PDMS microtube MT1. Labels A-F indicate pressure levels marked in Fig. 2c and d. The cylinder on the left-hand side is a blunt syringe needle with 2.108 mm outer diameter. (a) Before adding a hump, its bending did not develop into spiraling. (b) Adding a hump at the arrow point amplified MT1’s bending into spiraling. (Scale bars: 1 mm) (c) Axial and radial shape changes observed in MT1 (before adding the hump) as a function of pressure. (d) Changes in MT1’s RoC. Without the hump, it saturated at ~1.3 mm. The hump reduced it to ~500 μm. The inset shows that the RoC decreased rapidly once the pressure surpassed the threshold value at ~4.7 psi.