English

The Scallop Theorem and Swimming at the Mesoscale

Fluid Dynamics 2021-06-09 v1 Soft Condensed Matter

Abstract

By synergistically combining modeling, simulation and experiments, we show that there exists a regime of self-propulsion in which the inertia in the fluid dynamics can be separated from that of the swimmer. This is demonstrated by the motion of an asymmetric dumbbell that, despite deforming in a reciprocal fashion, self-propagates in a fluid due to a non-reciprocal Stokesian flow field. The latter arises from the difference in the coasting times of the two constitutive beads. This asymmetry acts as a second degree of freedom, recovering the scallop theorem at the mesoscopic scale.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.08305,
  title  = {The Scallop Theorem and Swimming at the Mesoscale},
  author = {Maxime Hubert and Oleg Trosman and Ylona Collard and Alexander Sukhov and Jens Harting and Nicolas Vandewalle and Ana-Suncana Smith},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.08305},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Main article: 4 pages, 3 figures. SI (for methods and calculations): 7 pages, no figure, 1 movie