Related papers: Enhanced motility of a microswimmer in rigid and e…
In this work we consider the following question: given a mechanical microswimming mechanism, does increased deformability of the swimmer body hinder or promote the motility of the swimmer? To answer this we study a microswimmer model…
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 conduct experiments with flexible swimmers to address the impact of fluid viscoelasticity on their locomotion. The swimmers are composed of a magnetic head actuated in rotation by a frequency-controlled magnetic field and a flexible tail…
The emerging field of self-driven active particles in fluid environments has recently created significant interest in the biophysics and bioengineering communities owing to their promising future biomedical and technological applications.…
Biological microswimmers often encounter deformable boundaries in physiological conditions; for instance, the viscoelastic walls of reproductive tract during migration of spermatozoa, or host tissue during early bacterial biofilm formation.…
Deformable boundaries are omnipresent in the habitats of swimming microorganisms, leading to intricate hydroelastic couplings. Employing a perturbation theory, valid for small deformations, we study the swimming dynamics of pushers and…
Many biological fluids are composed of suspended polymers immersed in a viscous fluid. A prime example is mucus, where the polymers are also known to form a network. While the presence of this microstructure is linked with an overall…
We analyze a minimal model for a rigid spherical microswimmer and explore the consequences of its extended surface on the interplay between its self-propulsion and flow properties. The model is the first order representation of…
Spontaneous growth of long-wavelength deformations is a defining feature of active fluids with orientational order. We investigate the effect of biaxial rectangular confinement on the instability of initially shear-aligned 3D isotropic…
The role of passive body dynamics on the kinematics of swimming micro-organisms in complex fluids is investigated. Asymptotic analysis of small amplitude motions of a finite-length undulatory swimmer in a Stokes-Oldroyd-B fluid is used to…
Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move though complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules, or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial…
Despite their importance in many biological, ecological and physical processes, microorganismal fluid flows under tight confinement have not been investigated experimentally. Strong screening of Stokelets in this geometry suggests that the…
Using numerical simulations, we characterized the behavior of an elastic membrane immersed in an active fluid. Our findings reveal a nontrivial folding and re-expansion of the membrane that is controlled by the interplay of its resistance…
Microswimmers and active colloids often move in confined systems, including those involving interfaces. Such interfaces, especially at the microscale, may deform in response to the stresses of the flow created by the active particle. We…
Suspensions of motile cells are model systems for understanding the unique mechanical properties of living materials which often consist of ensembles of self-propelled particles. We present here a quantitative comparison of theory against…
In this paper we study swimming of a model organism, the so-called Taylor's swimming sheet, in a viscoelastic fluid close to a solid boundary. This situation comprises natural habitats of many swimming microorganisms, and while previous…
The current study presents a systematic investigation of the locomotion performance of a swimmer with a wide range of parameter settings. Two-dimensional simulations with the immersed boundary method are employed for the fluid-structure…
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…
We theoretically describe the dynamics of swimmer populations confined in thin liquid films. We first demonstrate that hydrodynamic interactions between confined swimmers only depend on their shape and are independent of their specific…
Low Reynolds number swimmers frequently move near boundaries, such as spirochetes moving through porous tissues and sperm navigating the reproductive tract. Furthermore, these microorganisms must often navigate non-Newtonian fluids such as…