Related papers: Life at high Deborah number
Chaplygin's equations describing the planar motion of a rigid body in an unbounded volume of an ideal fluid involved in a circular flow around the body are considered. Hamiltonian structures, new integrable cases, and partial solutions are…
Cilia and flagella are actively bending slender organelles, performing functions such as motility, feeding and embryonic symmetry breaking. We review the mechanics of viscous-dominated microscale flow, including time-reversal symmetry, drag…
The natural habitats of microorganisms in the human microbiome and ocean and soil ecosystems are full of colloids and macromolecules, which impart non-Newtonian flow properties drastically affecting the locomotion of swimming…
When a microorganism begins swimming from rest in a Newtonian fluid such as water, it rapidly attains its steady-state swimming speed since changes in the velocity field spread quickly when the Reynolds number is small. However, swimming…
The properties of decaying turbulence is studied with the help of a Generalized Hydrodynamic (GHD) fluid model in the context of two dimensional visco - elastic medium such as a strongly coupled dusty plasma system. For the incompressible…
The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…
Active matter exhibits various forms of non-equilibrium states in the absence of external forcing, including macroscopic steady-state currents. Such states are often too complex to be modelled from first principles and our understanding of…
Most classical work on the hydrodynamics of low-Reynolds-number swimming addresses deterministic locomotion in quiescent environments. Thermal fluctuations in fluids are known to lead to a Brownian loss of the swimming direction. As most…
Many microorganisms and artificial microswimmers use helical appendages in order to generate locomotion. Though often rotated so as to produce thrust, some species of bacteria such Spiroplasma, Rhodobacter sphaeroides and Spirochetes induce…
The hydrodynamic flow field generated by self-propelled active particles and swimming microorganisms is strongly altered by the presence of nearby boundaries in a viscous flow. Using a simple model three-linked sphere swimmer, we show that…
Three-dimensional central symmetric bodies different from spheres that can float in all orientations are considered. For relative density rho=1/2 there are solutions, if holes in the body are allowed. For rho different from 1/2 the body is…
Elongate animals and robots use undulatory body waves to locomote through diverse environments. Geometric mechanics provides a framework to model and optimize such systems in highly damped environments, connecting a prescribed shape change…
We consider the problem of motion of several rigid bodies immersed in a perfect compressible fluid. Using the method of convex integration we establish the existence of infinitely many weak solutions with {\it a priori} prescribed motion of…
Microorganisms often encounter anisotropy, for example in mucus and biofilms. We study how anisotropy and elasticity of the ambient fluid affects the speed of a swimming microorganism with a prescribed stroke. Motivated by recent…
The coalescence and breakup of drops are classic examples of flows that feature singularities. The behavior of viscoelastic fluids near these singularities is particularly intriguing - not only because of their added complexity, but also…
We address the problem of controlling a dynamical system governing the motion of a 3D weighted shape changing body swimming in a perfect fluid. The rigid displacement of the swimmer results from the exchange of momentum between prescribed…
One approach to quantifying biological diversity consists of characterizing the statistical distribution of specific properties of a taxonomic group or habitat. Microorganisms living in fluid environments, and for whom motility is key,…
Life has a special status, it even has its own science: biology. In many ways, the logic of life seems to differ from that of atoms, molecules, planets, or any other `inanimate object'. However, life is increasingly measured using…
Understanding swimming in soft yielding media is challenging due to their complex deformation response to the swimmer's motion. We experimentally show that a scallop-inspired swimmer with reciprocally flapping wings generates locomotion in…
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…