Related papers: On self-propulsion of $N$-sphere micro-robot
Suspensions of self-propelled particles, such as swimming micro-organisms, are known to undergo complex dynamics as a result of hydrodynamic interactions. This fluid dynamics video presents a numerical simulation of such a suspension, based…
The swimming trajectories of self-propelled organisms or synthetic devices in a viscous fluid can be altered by hydrodynamic interactions with nearby boundaries. We explore a multipole description of swimming bodies and provide a general…
Hydrodynamic interactions are crucial for determining the cooperative behavior of microswimmers at low Reynolds numbers. Here we provide a comprehensive analysis of the scaling and strength of the interactions in the case of a pair of…
Biological and artificial microswimmers often have to propel through a variety of environments, ranging from heterogeneous suspending media to strong geometrical confinement. Under confinement, local flow fields generated by microswimmers,…
Cooperation between micro-organisms give rise to novel phenomena like clustering, swarming in suspension. We study the collective behavior of the artificial swimmer called Taylor line at low Reynolds number using multi-particle collision…
We report on a series of fully resolved simulations of the flow around a rigid sphere translating steadily near a wall, either in a fluid at rest or in the presence of a uniform shear. Non-rotating and freely rotating spheres subject to a…
We design and test an octopus-inspired flexible hull robot that demonstrates outstanding fast-starting performance. The robot is hyper-inflated with water, and then rapidly deflates to expel the fluid so as to power the escape maneuver.…
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…
In Stokes flow, Purcell's scallop theorem forbids objects with time-reversible (reciprocal) swimming strokes from moving. In the presence of inertia, this restriction is eased and reciprocally deforming bodies can swim. A number of recent…
We investigate the collective dynamics of self-propelled droplets, confined in a one dimensional micro-fluidic channel. On one hand, neighboring droplets align and form large trains of droplets moving in the same direction. On the other…
The backswimmer fly is an aquatic insect, capable of regulating its buoyancy underwater. Its abdomen is covered with hemoglobin cells, used to bind and release oxygen, reversibly. Upon entering water, the fly entraps an air bubble in a…
We consider a 2D model of an autophoretic particle in which the particle has a circular shape and emits/absorbs a solute that diffuses and is advected by the suspending fluid. Beyond a certain emission/absorption rate (characterized by a…
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…
In nature, metachronal coordination is an efficient strategy for fluid pumping and self-propulsion. Yet, mimetic systems for this type of organization are scarce. Recently, metachronal motion was observed in a bead-based magnetocapillary…
At the millimeter scale and in the intermediate Reynolds number (Re) regime, the midge and mosquito larvae can reach swimming speeds of more than one body length per cycle performing a "figure-of-8" gait, in which their elongated bodies…
By synergistically combining modeling, simulation and experiments, we show that there exists a regime of self-propulsion in which the inertia in the fluid dynamics can be separated from that of the swimmer. This is demonstrated by the…
A simple way to generate propulsion at low Reynolds number is to periodically oscillate a passive flexible filament. Here we present a macroscopic experimental investigation of such a propulsive mechanism. A robotic swimmer is constructed…
A number of swimming microorganisms such as ciliates ($\textit{Opalina}$) and multicellular colonies of flagellates ($\textit{Volvox}$) are approximately spherical in shape and swim using beating arrays of cilia or short flagella covering…
A popular method to induce synthetic propulsion at the microscale is to use the forces created by surface-produced gas bubbles inside the asymmetric body of a catalytic swimmer (referred to in the literature as microrocket). Gas bubbles…
Recent experiments showed that standing acoustic waves could be exploited to induce self-propulsion of rigid metallic particles in the direction perpendicular to the acoustic wave. We propose in this paper a physical mechanism for these…