Related papers: Swimming in Granular Media
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 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…
Three-dimensional simulations with fully resolved hydrodynamics are performed to study the dynamics of a single squirmer under gravity, in order to clarify its motion in the vicinity of a flat plate. Different dynamics emerge for different…
We investigate theoretically the collective dynamics of a suspension of low Reynolds number swimmers that are confined to two dimensions by a thin fluid film. Our model swimmer is characterized by internal degrees of freedom which locally…
Suspensions of unicellular microswimmers such as flagellated bacteria or motile algae exhibit spontaneous density heterogeneities at large enough concentrations. Based on the relative location of the biological actuation appendages i.e.…
We study experimentally the motion of an intruder dragged into an amorphous monolayer of horizontally vibrated grains at high packing fractions. This motion exhibits two transitions. The first transition separates a continuous motion regime…
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…
The concept of swim pressure quantifies the average force exerted by microswimmers on confining walls in non-equilibrium. Here we explore how the swim pressure depends on the wall curvature and on the presence of sharp corners in the wall.…
Few simulations exist for microswimmers near deformable interfaces. Here, we present numerical simulations of the hydrodynamic flows associated with a single microswimmer embedded in a binary fluid mixture. The two fluids demix, separated…
Natural swimmers usually perform undulations to propel themselves and perform a range of maneuvers. These include various biological species ranging from micro-sized organisms to large-sized fishes that undulate at typical kinematic…
The majority of studies on self-propelled particles and microswimmers concentrates on objects that do not feature a deterministic bending of their trajectory. However, perfect axial symmetry is hardly found in reality, and shape-asymmetric…
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…
The hydrodynamic interactions between a sedimenting microswimmer and a solid wall have ubiquitous biological and technological applications. A plethora of gravity-induced swimming dynamics near a planar no-slip wall provides a platform for…
The time dynamics of flagellar and ciliary beating is often neglected in theories of microswimmers, with the most common models prescribing a time-constant actuation of the surrounding fluid. By explicitly introducing a metachronal wave,…
We present in this fluid dynamics video a novel experimental setup with self-propelled swimmers on a free surface. The swimmers, modeled as flexible thin filaments, are subjected to external electromagnetic forcing driving a propagating…
Many microorganisms live and evolve in complex fluids. Examples include mammalian spermatozoa in cervical mucus, worms (e.g., \textit{C. elegans}) in wet soil, and bacteria (e.g., \textit{H. pylori}) in our stomach lining. Due to the…
The self-propelled motion of microscopic bodies immersed in a fluid medium is studied using molecular dynamics simulation. The advantage of the atomistic approach is that the detailed level of description allows complete freedom in…
Microswimmers play an important role in shaping the world around us. The squirmer is a simple model for microswimmer whose cilia oscillations on its spherical surface induce an effective slip velocity to propel itself. The rapid development…
Using MRI and high-speed video we investigate the motion of a large intruder particle inside a vertically shaken bed of smaller particles. We find a pronounced, non-monotonic density dependence, with both light and heavy intruders moving…
Understanding the penetration dynamics of intruders in granular beds is relevant not only for fundamental physics, but also for geophysical processes and construction on sediments or granular soils in areas potentially affected by…