A formalism is presented for the nonlinear dynamics of inextensible stiff polymers within the model of local viscous dissipation. By casting the internal elastic forces in an intrinsic representation, enforcing the constraint of local inextensibility through a Lagrange multiplier function, and utilizing techniques from the differential geometry of curve motion, the dynamics of configurations of arbitrary complexity is reduced to a scalar partial differential equation amenable to analytical and efficient numerical study. As an example, the formalism is applied to the “folding” dynamics of stiff polymers with pairwise self-interactions and intrinsic curvature.

• Received 31 March 1995

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.75.1094