Related papers: Motion-reversal in a simple microscopic swimmer
We use numerical simulations to probe the dynamics of concentrated suspensions of spherical microswimmers interacting hydrodynamically. Previous work in the dilute limit predicted orientational instabilities of aligned suspensions for both…
The habitat of microorganisms is typically complex and viscoelastic. A natural question arises: Do polymers in a suspension of active swimmers enhance chaotic motion or promote orientational order? We address this issue by performing…
Microswimmers are active particles of microscopic size that self-propel by setting the surrounding fluid into motion. According to the kind of far-field fluid flow that they induce, they are classified into pushers and pullers. Many studies…
We demonstrate that the ubiquitous laboratory magnetic stirrer provides a simple passive method of magnetic levitation, in which the so-called `flea' levitates indefinitely. We study the onset of levitation and quantify the flea's motion (a…
We study the dynamics of gyrotactic microswimmers suspended in homogeneous and isotropic turbulence by using direct numerical simulations (DNS). The swimmers are characterized by three non-dimensional parameters: their aspect ratio…
We address the problem of inverse polymer swelling. This phenomenon, in which a collapsed polymer chain swells upon decreasing temperature, can be observed experimentally in so-called thermoreversible homopolymers in aqueous solution, and…
The effect of precession in a rotating sphere filled with fluid was studied with direct numerical simulations, both in the incompressible hydrodynamics (HD) and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) scenarios. In both cases the asymptotic state and…
We examine the motion of rigid, ellipsoidal swimmers subjected to a steady vortex flow in two dimensions. Numerical simulations of swimmers in a spatially periodic array of vortices reveal a range of possible behaviors, including trapping…
The swimming behavior of bacteria and other microorganisms is sensitive to the physical properties of the fluid in which they swim. Mucus, biofilms, and artificial liquid-crystalline solutions are all examples of fluids with some degree of…
Magnetic fields break time-reversal symmetry, which is leveraged in many settings to enable the nonreciprocal behavior of light. This is the core physics of circulators and other elements used in a variety of microwave and optical settings.…
In the limit of zero Reynolds number (Re), swimmers propel themselves exploiting a series of non-reciprocal body motions. For an artificial swimmer, a proper selection of the power source is required to drive its motion, in cooperation with…
From bacteria and sperm cells to artificial microrobots, self-propelled microscopic objects at low Reynolds numbers often perceive fluctuating mechanical and chemical stimuli and contact exterior wall boundaries both in nature and the…
Translational and rotational swimming at small Reynolds number of a planar assembly of identical spheres immersed in an incompressible viscous fluid is studied on the basis of a set of equations of motion for the individual spheres. The…
In this article, we consider a swimmer (i.e. a self-deformable body) immersed in a fluid, the flow of which is governed by the stationary Stokes equations. This model is relevant for studying the locomotion of microorganisms or micro robots…
Microswimmers can acquire information on the surrounding fluid by sensing mechanical queues. They can then navigate in response to these signals. We analyse this navigation by combining deep reinforcement learning with direct numerical…
Microorganisms are rarely found in Nature swimming freely in an unbounded fluid. Instead, they typically encounter other organisms, hard walls, or deformable boundaries such as free interfaces or membranes. Hydrodynamic interactions between…
We study the coupled hydrodynamics between a motile slender microswimmer and a deformable interface that separates two Newtonian fluid regions. From the disturbance field generated by the swimming motion, we quantitatively characterize the…
Micro-organisms propel themselves in viscous environments by the periodic, nonreciprocal beating of slender appendages known as flagella. Active materials have been widely exploited to mimic this form of locomotion. However, the realization…
In analogy to nanoscopic molecules that are composed of individual atoms, we consider an active "microswimmer molecule". It is built up from three individual magnetic colloidal microswimmers that are connected by harmonic springs and…
Swimming at low Reynolds number in Newtonian fluids is only possible through non-reciprocal body deformations due to the kinematic reversibility of the Stokes equations. We consider here a model swimmer consisting of two linked spheres,…