Dynamic behavior of elastic strips near shape transitions

Elastic strips provide a general motif for studying shape transitions. When actuated through rotation of its boundaries, a buckled strip exhibits, depending on the direction of rotation, three types of shape transitions: buckling, algebraic snap-through, or exponential snap-through. The transition dynamics is linked to the character of the bifurcation, which, in turn, is disclosed by the normal form of the system, but deriving normal forms is challenging. Recent work has used asymptotic methods to obtain this form for algebraic snap-through, but, to date, there is no methodology for extending this analysis to other transitions. Here we introduce a method to analyze the dynamic characteristics of an elastic strip near a transition and extend, in a straightforward manner, the previously proposed asymptotic analysis to exponential snap-through and buckling transitions. Importantly, we show that these normal forms dictate all the dynamic characteristics of the elastic strip near a shape transition. Our analysis provides reliable tools to diagnose and anticipate elastic shape transitions.