Related papers: The transient swimming of a waving sheet
Many microorganisms swim through gels, materials with nonzero zero-frequency elastic shear modulus, such as mucus. Biological gels are typically heterogeneous, containing both a structural scaffold (network) and a fluid solvent. We analyze…
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…
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…
Both natural and artificial small-scale swimmers may often self-propel in environments subject to complex geometrical constraints. While most past theoretical work on low-Reynolds number locomotion addressed idealised geometrical…
Motivated by recent advances in vesicle engineering, we consider theoretically the locomotion of shape-changing bilayer vesicles at low Reynolds number. By modulating their volume and membrane composition, the vesicles can be made to change…
Biological organisms swimming at low Reynolds number are often influenced by the presence of rigid boundaries and soft interfaces. In this paper we present an analysis of locomotion near a free surface with surface tension. Using a…
The swimming of a spheroid immersed in a viscous fluid and performing surface deformations periodically in time is studied on the basis of Stokes equations of low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The average over a period of time of the…
A matrix formulation is derived for the calculation of the swimming speed and the power required for swimming of an assembly of rigid spheres immersed in a viscous fluid of infinite extent. The spheres may have arbitrary radii and may…
The net steady state flow pattern of a distorting sphere is studied in the framework of the bilinear theory of swimming at low Reynolds number. It is argued that the starting point of a theory of interacting active particles should be based…
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…
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,…
In G.I. Taylor's historic paper on swimming microorganisms, a two dimensional sheet was proposed as a model for flagellated cells passing traveling waves as a means of locomotion. Using a perturbation series, Taylor computed swimming speeds…
The locomotion of microorganisms in fluids is ubiquitous and plays an important role in numerous biological processes. In this chapter we present an overview of theoretical modeling for low-Reynolds-number locomotion.
We investigate the hydrodynamic interactions between microorganisms swimming at low Reynolds number. By considering simple model swimmers, and combining analytic and numerical approaches, we investigate the time-averaged flow field around a…
Active particles often swim in confined environments. The transport mechanisms, especially the global one as reflected by the Taylor dispersion model, are of great practical interest to various applications. For active dispersion process in…
Taylor's swimming sheet is a classical model of microscale propulsion and pumping. Many biological fluids and substances are fibrous, having a preferred direction in their microstructure; for example cervical mucus is formed of polymer…
Swimming by shape changes at low Reynolds number is widely used in biology and understanding how the efficiency of movement depends on the geometric pattern of shape changes is important to understand swimming of microorganisms and in…
The swimming of an elliptical disk at small Reynolds number is studied on the basis of a perturbative solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow near a deformable infinite sheet. A stroke involving an elliptically polarized…
We consider incompressible flows between two transversely vibrating solid walls and construct an asymptotic expansion of solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations in the limit when both the amplitude of vibrations and the thickness of the…
The swimming velocity and rate of dissipation of a linear chain consisting of two or three little spheres and a big sphere is studied on the basis of low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The big sphere is treated as a passive cargo, driven by…