Elastic three-sphere microswimmer in a viscous fluid
Soft Condensed Matter
2017-08-10 v1
Abstract
We discuss the dynamics of a generalized three-sphere microswimmer in which the spheres are connected by two elastic springs. The natural length of each spring is assumed to undergo a prescribed cyclic change. We analytically obtain the average swimming velocity as a function of the frequency of the cyclic change in the natural length. In the low-frequency region, the swimming velocity increases with the frequency and its expression reduces to that of the original three-sphere model by Najafi and Golestanian. In the high-frequency region, conversely, the average velocity decreases with increasing the frequency. Such a behavior originates from the intrinsic spring relaxation dynamics of an elastic swimmer moving in a viscous fluid.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1707.03580,
title = {Elastic three-sphere microswimmer in a viscous fluid},
author = {Kento Yasuda and Yuto Hosaka and Mizuki Kuroda and Ryuichi Okamoto and Shigeyuki Komura},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.03580},
year = {2017}
}