Bending of floating flexible legs

Abstract

When long thin flexible solid objects, such as the legs of water striders, disposable spoons and human hairs, are pressed against a liquid surface, they bend due to interfacial and hydrostatic forces. To understand the phenomenon, we study the bending of a sheet touching the liquid surface at an angle while clamped at the other end, to find its deflection and the load that the sheet can support before sinking. The theoretically predicted shapes of the sheet and the meniscus match well with experiments. Our theory shows that flexible sheets can support more load than rigid ones before sinking when the sheets are highly hydrophobic.