Related papers: Soft swimming: Exploiting deformable interfaces fo…

Transport of material across liquid interfaces is ubiquitous for living cells and is also a crucial step in drug delivery and in many industrial processes. The fluids that are present on either side of the interfaces will usually have…

Swimming velocity and rate of dissipation of a sphere with surface distortions are discussed on the basis of the Stokes equations of low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. At first the surface distortions are assumed to cause an irrotational…

In many biological systems, microorganisms swim through complex polymeric fluids, and usually deform the medium at a rate faster than the inverse fluid relaxation time. We address the basic properties of such life at high Deborah number…

Swimming at small Reynolds number of a linear assembly of identical spheres immersed in a viscous fluid is studied on the basis of a set of equations of motion for the individual spheres. The motion of the spheres is caused by actuating…

It has been argued that an extended, quasi-rigid body evolving freely in curved spacetime can deviate from its natural trajectory by simply performing cyclic deformations. More interestingly, in the limit of rapid cycles, the amount of…

We discuss the scaling laws for the flow generated in a viscous fluid by a wave propagating along a solid boundary. This has applications to the displacement of tiny objects on solids, under the effect of progressive surface waves and for…

We use particle simulations to reveal two distinct propulsion mechanisms for a scallop-like swimmer to locomote itself in granular media by reciprocally flapping its wings. Based on the discrete element method, we examine the kinematics and…

Active dumbbell suspensions constitute one of the simplest model system for collective swimming at low Reynolds number. Generalizing recent work, we derive and analyze stroke-averaged equations of motion that capture the effective…

We explore hydrodynamic interactions between microswimmers and corrugated, or rough, surfaces, as found often in biological systems and microfluidic devices. Using the Lorentz reciprocal theorem for viscous flows we derive exact expressions…

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…

Lift forces are widespread in hydrodynamics. These are typically observed for big and fast objects, and are often associated with a combination of fluid inertia (i.e. large Reynolds numbers) and specific symmetry-breaking mechanisms. In…

Anisotropic viscous drag is usually believed to be a requirement for the low Reynolds number locomotion of slender bodies such as flagella and cilia. Here we show that locomotion under isotropic drag is possible for extensible slender…

Elastohydrodynamic lubrication, or simply soft lubrication, refers to the motion of deformable objects near a boundary lubricated by a fluid, and is one of the key physical mechanisms to minimise friction and wear in natural and engineered…

The possibility of microscopic swimming by extraction of energy from an external flow is discussed, focusing on the migration of a simple trimer across a linear shear flow. The geometric properties of swimming, together with the possible…

Inspired by recent experiments using synthetic microswimmers to manipulate droplets, we investigate the low-Reynolds-number locomotion of a model swimmer (a spherical squirmer) encapsulated inside a droplet of comparable size in another…

Here we introduce a two-dimensional (2D) low-Reynolds swimmer and discuss the motion of the swimmer both in noise-free and stochastic regimes. Three spheres, linked by extensible arms, in a plane form the triangle body of micro-swimmer.…

At low Reynolds numbers, the hydrodynamic interaction between dumbbells driven by an external rotating field can be attractive or repulsive. Dumbbells of dissimilar asymmetric shape or different coupling to the external field undergo…

Metachronal paddling is a swimming strategy in which an organism oscillates sets of adjacent limbs with a constant phase lag, propagating a metachronal wave through its limbs and propelling it forward. This limb coordination strategy is…

Swimming microorganisms often self propel in fluids with complex rheology. While past theoretical work indicates that fluid viscoelasticity should hinder their locomotion, recent experiments on waving swimmers suggest a possible…

Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium, or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized coordination is believed to…