Related papers: Micropropulsion and microrheology in complex fluid…
Micron-sized self-propelled (active) particles can be considered as model systems for characterizing more complex biological organisms like swimming bacteria or motile cells. We produce asymmetric microswimmers by soft lithography and study…
We analyze the steady non-Newtonian fluid-structure interaction between the flow of an Oldroyd-B fluid and a deformable channel. Specifically, we provide a theoretical framework for calculating the leading-order effect of the fluid's…
Propulsion through fluids is a key component in the life cycle of many microbes, be it in development, infection, or simply finding nutrients. In systems of biomedical relevance, this propulsion is often through polymer suspensions that…
Mechanical properties are intrinsically related to the structures and dynamics of systems. The main tools to investigate mechanical properties are rheology and microrheology. Those techniques can focus on the macroscopic and microscopic…
We investigate the motion of a suspended non-Brownian sphere past a fixed cylindrical or spherical obstacle in the limit of zero Reynolds number for arbitrary particle-obstacle aspect ratios. We consider both a suspended sphere moving in a…
Micromotor and nanomotor particles are typically made using dense solid particles that can sediment or be trapped in confined flow environments. Creation of much larger motors should be possible if a very low-density system is used with…
Most biological fluids are viscoelastic, meaning that they have elastic properties in addition to the dissipative properties found in Newtonian fluids. Computational models can help us understand viscoelastic flow, but are often limited in…
Many microorganisms swim in fluids with complex rheological properties. Although much is now understood about motion of these swimmers in Newtonian fluids, the understanding is still developing in non-Newtonian fluids --- this understanding…
Micro-organisms expend energy moving through complex media. While propulsion speed is an important property of locomotion, efficiency is another factor that may determine the swimming gait adopted by a micro-organism in order to locomote in…
Many cells exploit the bending or rotation of flagellar filaments in order to self-propel in viscous fluids. While appropriate theoretical modelling is available to capture flagella locomotion in simple, Newtonian fluids, formidable…
Conventionally, a microscopic particle that performs a reciprocal stroke cannot move through its environment. This is because at small scales, the response of simple Newtonian fluids is purely viscous and flows are time-reversible. We show…
We present a deformation-dependent propulsion phenomenon for soft particles such as cells in microchannels. It is based on a broken time reversal symmetry generated by a fast forward and slow backward motion of a fluid which does not…
Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…
We present an optomechanical method for locally measuring the rheological properties of complex fluids in the ultra-high frequency range (UHF). A mechanical disk of microscale volume is used as a small-amplitude oscillating probe that…
Shear-thinning viscosity is a non-Newtonian behaviour that active particles often encounter in biological fluids such as blood and mucus. The fundamental question of how this ubiquitous non-Newtonian rheology affects the propulsion of…
Viscoelastic fluid flows in narrow non-uniform geometries are ubiquitous in various engineering applications and physiological flow systems. For such flows, one of the key interests is understanding how fluid viscoelasticity affects the…
We introduce a new heterogeneous multi-scale method for the simulation of flows of non-Newtonian fluids in general geometries and present its application to paradigmatic two-dimensional flows of polymeric fluids. Our method combines…
Recent findings of possible applications of bio-friendly synthetic self-phoretic swimmers, have motivated the researchers in investigating the various motion-generating mechanisms to optimize the operating characteristics of the same. In…
We derive the hydrodynamic equations of motion for a fluid of active particles described by under- damped Langevin equations that reduce to the Active-Brownian-Particle model, in the overdamped limit. The contraction into the hydrodynamic…
We propose a unifying rheological framework for dense suspensions of non-Brownian spheres, predicting the onsets of particle friction and particle inertia as distinct shear thickening mechanisms, while capturing quasistatic and soft…