Related papers: Stirring by squirmers
Suspensions of microswimmers are a rich source of fascinating new fluid mechanics. Recently we predicted the active pipe flow dispersion of gyrotactic microalgae, whose orientation is biased by gravity and flow shear. Analytical theory…
We study, by means of an exact analytical solution, the motion of a spheroidal, axisymmetric squirmer in an unbounded fluid, as well as the low Reynolds number hydrodynamic flow associated to it. In contrast to the case of a spherical…
The underlying mechanisms and physics of catalytic Janus microswimmers is highly complex, requiring details of the associated phoretic fields and the physiochemical properties of catalyst, particle, boundaries, and the fuel used. Therefore,…
We study the trajectories of a model microorganism inside three-dimensional channels with square and rectangular cross-sections. Using (i) numerical simulations based on lattice-Boltzmann method, and (ii) analytical expressions using…
Mass dispersion in oscillatory flows is intimately linked to various environmental and biological processes, offering a distinct contrast to dispersion in steady flows due to the periodic expansion and contraction of particle patches. In…
Microorganisms navigate through fluid, often confined by complex environments, to survive and sustain life. Inspired by this fact, we consider a model system and seek to understand the wall curvature driven dynamics of a squirmer, a…
Motivated by the swimming of sperm in the non-Newtonian fluids of the female mammalian reproductive tract, we examine the swimming of filaments in the nonlinear viscoelastic Upper Convected Maxwell model. We obtain the swimming velocity and…
Tracer particles immersed in suspensions of biological microswimmers such as E. coli or C. reinhardtii display phenomena unseen in conventional equilibrium systems, including strongly enhanced diffusivity relative to the Brownian value and…
The interaction between swimming microorganisms or artificial self-propelled colloids and passive (tracer) particles in a fluid leads to enhanced diffusion of the tracers. This enhancement has attracted strong interest, as it could lead to…
Self-propelled microorganisms, such as unicellular algae or bacteria, swim along their director relative to the fluid velocity. Under a steady shear flow the director rotates in close orbit, a periodic structure that is preserved under an…
In this note, we study the effect of viscosity gradients on the energy dissipated by the motion of microswimmers and the associated efficiency of that motion. Using spheroidal squirmer model swimmers in weak linearly varying viscosity…
We derive from first principles a three-dimensional theory of self-propelled particle swarming in a viscous fluid environment. Our model predicts emergent collective behavior that depends critically on fluid opacity, mechanism of…
We consider two systems of active swimmers moving close to a solid surface, one being a living population of wild-type \textit{E. coli} and the other being an assembly of self-propelled Au-Pt rods. In both situations, we have identified two…
Several recent experiments suggest that rather generally the diffusion of enzymes may be augmented through their activity. We demonstrate that such swimming motility can emerge from the interplay between the enzyme energy landscape and the…
We discuss a locomotion of a three-sphere microswimmer in a viscoelastic medium and propose a new type of active microrheology. We derive a relation which connects average swimming velocity and frequency-dependent viscosity of the…
A model for diffusion in liquids that couples the dynamics of tracer particles to a fluctuating Stokes equation for the fluid is investigated in the limit of large Schmidt number. In this limit, the concentration of tracers is shown to…
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…
Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…
Undulatory locomotion is ubiquitous in nature and observed in different media, from the swimming of flagellated microorganisms in biological fluids, to the slithering of snakes on land, or the locomotion of sandfish lizards in sand. Despite…
We study swimming of small spherical particles who regulate fluid flow on their surface by applying tangential squirming strokes. We derive translational and rotational velocities for any given stroke which is not restricted by axial…