Hidden symmetry of global solutions in twisted elastic rings

We investigate global equilibria of twisted, isotropic elastic rings. The h igh degree of symmetry in the problem leads to nonisolated solutions. We pr ove that all solutions are flip-symmetric, and from this we can globally is olate ail solution branches. We derive possible other choices for boundary conditions systematically and show that other conditions necessarily lead t o spurious solutions. We show global computations performed by the Parallel Simplex Algorithm.