FLEXLAB

Our research focuses on embracing mechanical instabilities of slender structures toward devising, understanding and exploiting novel functional mechanisms, over a wide range of lengthscales.

Research at EPFL’s Flexible Structures Laboratory (the fleXLab) focuses on developing a fundamental understanding of the large deformation of slender structures that emerge in their post-buckling regime. We seek to harvest the underlying mechanical instabilities towards understanding and exploiting novel functional mechanisms, over a wide range of length scales.

Our work is rooted on the basis of recognizing scaled high-precision model experiments as a powerful tool for discovery and exploration in Mechanics, supported by theory and computation, in a vision of science-enabled engineering and engineering-motivated science. The final goal is to develop new classes of functional, flexible structures that can be rationally designed using predictive modeling frameworks.

We are passionate about engineering applications of flexible thin structures across a wide range of length scales, as well as opening up new curiosity-driven fundamental questions (and providing answers!) in this class of geometrically nonlinear mechanical systems.

• 15/12/2025
  Bastien’s paper “Self-locking and stability of the bowline knot” made the cover of EML.
• 01/09/2025
  Mario Ibrahim (from Sudan) joins the fleXLab as a Ph.D. student.
• 1/06/2025
  Ji-Sung Park (from Korea) joins the fleXLab as a Postdoc.
• 01/08/2024
  Danick Lamoureux (from Canada) joins the fleXLab as a Ph.D. student.
• 17/12/2023
  Arefeh’s paper “Leveraging the snap buckling of bistable magnetic shells to design a refreshable braille dot” is published in the Advanced Materials Technologies Journal[journal link].
• 01/12/2023
  Luna’s paper “Fluid-structure interactions of bristled wings: The trade-off between weight and drag” is published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface[journal link].
• 01/12/2023
  Michael’s paper “Twisting instabilities in elastic ribbons with inhomogeneous pre-stress: a macroscopic analog of thermodynamic phase transition” is published in the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids[journal link].
• 21/11/2023
  Fani’s’s paper “Defect-Defect Interactions in the Buckling of Imperfect Spherical Shells” is published in the Journal of Applied Mechanics[journal link].
• 15/11/2023
  Ubamanyu Kanthasamy (from Sri Lanka) joins the fleXLab as a Postdoc.
• 07/11/2023
  Paul’s paper “The strength of surgical knots involves a critical interplay between friction and elastoplasticity” is published in Science Advances[journal link].

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fleXLab – Flexible Structures Laboratory

EPFL STI IGM FLEXLAB
MED 0 1726 (MED building)
Station 9
CH-1015 Lausanne

Phone: +41 21 693 57 26

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