Fig 9. The influence of curvature model on mechanical analysis.
(A) A whisker reference frame is defined with the whisker in standard orientation. The whisker is allowed to rotate about the z-axis at its base upon contact. The center of mass (CoM) of the whisker is β degrees from the x-axis, with a straight-line distance dCoM to the whisker base. The tangent at the point of contact (red) forms an angle θ to the x-axis. The whisker model is assumed to be frictionless, so the external force of magnitude F is perpendicular to the tangent at the location of contact, with a distance rF to the whisker base. The total mass (M) and the moment of inertia (I) about the z-axis are also known. (B) The second factor of the right side of Eq 10 is evaluated along the whisker arc length for 225 raw whisker shapes. (C-F) Each panel has the same axes as (B) but results are shown from using different models for approximating the whisker shape. Note that for all panels B- F, the y-axis is truncated at 0.6 for visual clarity.