Related papers: Beating patterns of filaments in viscoelastic flui…
Viscoelastic fluids impact the locomotion of swimming microorganisms and can be harnessed to devise new types of self-propelling devices. Here we report on experiments demonstrating the use of normal stress differences for propulsion. Rigid…
Many bacteria are motile by means of one or more rotating rigid helical flagella, making them the only known organism to use rotation as a means of propulsion. The rotation is supplied by the bacterial flagellar motor, a particularly…
The swimming motility of bacteria is driven by the action of bacterial flagellar motors, whose outermost structure is a long and thin helicoidal filament. When rotated, the fluid medium exerts an anisotropic viscous drag on the flagellar…
Active matter systems such as eukaryotic cells and bacteria continuously transform chemical energy to motion. Hence living systems exert active stresses on the complex environments in which they reside. One recurring aspect of this…
In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…
Organisms often swim through fluids that are spatially inhomogeneous. If the fluids are polymeric, gradients in polymer concentration may lead to gradients in both fluid viscosity and elasticity. In this letter, we present theoretical…
The macroscopic properties of polymeric fluids are inherited from the material properties of the fibers embedded in the solvent. The behavior of such passive fibers in flow has been of interest in a wide range of systems, including cellular…
The stretching of viscoelastic polymer solutions close to break-up can create attached drops on a filament, whose properties and dynamics are little understood. The stretching of capillary bridges and the consecutive filament, until its…
Cell motility in viscous fluids is ubiquitous and affects many biological processes, including reproduction, infection, and the marine life ecosystem. Here we review the biophysical and mechanical principles of locomotion at the small…
Motility is a fundamental feature of living matter, encompassing single cells and collective behavior. Such living systems are characterized by non-conservativity of energy and a large diversity of spatio-temporal patterns. Thus,…
Bacterial swimming is well characterized in uniform liquids at rest. The natural habitat of bacterial swimmers, however, is often dominated by moving fluids and interfaces, resulting in shear flows that may strongly alter bacterial…
Fluid-structure simulations of slender inextensible filaments in a viscous fluid are often plagued by numerical stiffness. Recent coarse-graining studies have reduced the computational requirements of simulating such systems, though have…
The morphological dynamics, instabilities and transitions of elastic filaments in viscous flows underlie a wealth of biophysical processes from flagellar propulsion to intracellular streaming, and are also key to deciphering the rheological…
Flagella beating in complex fluids are significantly influenced by viscoelastic stresses. Relevant examples include the ciliary transport of respiratory airway mucus and the motion of spermatozoa in the mucus-filled female reproductive…
Viscoelasticity governs the locomotion strategies of deformable microorganisms, rendering it a fundamental mechanical property of microbial motility and an integral component in the design of envisioned microbots. Recent studies have shown…
Fluid-suspended microorganisms have evolved different swimming and feeding strategies in order to cope with an environment dominated by viscous effects. For instance ciliated organisms rely on the collective motion of flexible appendices to…
Odd viscoelastic materials are constrained by fewer symmetries than their even counterparts. The breaking of these symmetries allow these materials to exhibit different features, which have attracted considerable attention in recent years.…
We describe simulations of a microscopic elastic filament immersed in a fluid and subject to a uniform external force. Our method accounts for the hydrodynamic coupling between the flow generated by the filament and the friction force it…
How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…
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…