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Related papers: Shape of optimal active flagella

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Motile eukaryotic cells propel themselves in viscous fluids by passing waves of bending deformation down their flagella. An infinitely long flagellum achieves a hydrodynamically optimal low-Reynolds number locomotion when the angle between…

Biological Physics · Physics 2010-03-03 Saverio E. Spagnolie , Eric Lauga

Swimming eukaryotic microorganisms such as spermatozoa, algae and ciliates self-propel in viscous fluids using travelling wave-like deformations of slender appendages called flagella. Waves are predominant because Purcell's scallop theorem…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2020-11-18 Eric Lauga

Eukaryotic swimming cells such as spermatozoa, algae or protozoa use flagella or cilia to move in viscous fluids. The motion of their flexible appendages in the surrounding fluid induces propulsive forces that balance with the viscous drag…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2023-10-06 Maciej Lisicki , Marcos F. Velho Rodrigues , Eric Lauga

Propulsion at microscopic scales is often achieved through propagating traveling waves along hair-like organelles called flagella. Taylor's two-dimensional swimming sheet model is frequently used to provide insight into problems of…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2014-06-05 Thomas D. Montenegro-Johnson , Eric Lauga

The propulsion of many eukaryotic cells is generated by flagella, flexible slender filaments that are actively oscillating in space and time. The dynamics of these biological appendages have inspired the design of many types of artificial…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-04-15 Mariia Dvoriashyna , Eric Lauga

We combine a general formulation of microswimmmer equations of motion with a numerical bead-shell model to calculate the hydrodynamic interactions with the fluid, from which the swimming speed, power and efficiency are extracted. From this…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2017-03-07 Bram Bet , Gijs Boosten , Marjolein Dijkstra , René van Roij

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…

The swimming of a bead-spring chain in a viscous incompressible fluid as a model of a sperm is studied in the framework of low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The optimal mode in the class of planar flagellar strokes of small amplitude is…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2015-05-06 B. U. Felderhof

In a fluid environment, flagellated microswimmers propel themselves by rotating their flagella. The morphology of these flagella significantly influences forward speed, swimming efficiency, and directional stability, which are critical for…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2025-06-25 Baopi Liu , Lu Chen , Wenjun Xu

Many biological microorganisms and artificial microswimmers react to external cues of environmental gradients by changing their swimming directions. We study here the behavior of eukarytic flagellated microswimmers in linear viscosity…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-05-29 Shubham Anand , Jens Elgeti , Gerhard Gompper

Spermatozoa self-propel by propagating bending waves along a predominantly active elastic flagellum. The organized structure of the "9 + 2" axoneme is lost in the most-distal few microns of the flagellum, and therefore this region is…

In this paper we are interested in optimizing the shape of multi-flagellated helical microswimmers. Mimicking the propagation of helical waves along the flagella, they self-propel by rotating their tails. The swimmer's dynamics is computed…

The eukaryotic flagellum beats periodically, driven by the oscillatory dynamics of molecular motors, to propel cells and pump fluids. Small, but perceivable fluctuations in the beat of individual flagella have physiological implications for…

Cell Behavior · Quantitative Biology 2015-06-18 Rui Ma , Gary S. Klindt , Ingmar H. Riedel-Kruse , Frank Jülicher , Benjamin M. Friedrich

In a variety of biological processes, eukaryotic cells use cilia to transport flow. Although cilia have a remarkably conserved internal molecular structure, experimental observations report very diverse kinematics. To address this…

Biological Physics · Physics 2012-07-19 Christophe Eloy , Eric Lauga

Swimming cells and microorganisms are as diverse in their collective dynamics as they are in their individual shapes and propulsion mechanisms. Even for sperm cells, which have a stereotyped shape consisting of a cell body connected to a…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2018-06-25 S. F. Schoeller , E. E. Keaveny

Most bacteria swim through fluids by rotating helical flagella which can take one of twelve distinct polymorphic shapes. The most common helical waveform is the "normal" form, used during forward swimming runs. To shed light on the…

Biological Physics · Physics 2015-03-17 Saverio E. Spagnolie , Eric Lauga

Understanding and optimizing the design of helical micro-swimmers is crucial for advancing their application in various fields. This study presents an innovative approach combining Free-Form Deformation with Bayesian Optimization to enhance…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-11 Lucas Palazzolo , Laëtitia Giraldi , Mickael Binois , Luca Berti

Cells swimming in viscous fluids create flow fields which influence the transport of relevant nutrients, and therefore their feeding rate. We propose a modeling approach to the problem of optimal feeding at zero Reynolds number. We consider…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2011-10-19 Sébastien Michelin , Eric Lauga

We present an automated procedure for the design of optimal actuation for flagellar magnetic microswimmers based on numerical optimization. Using this method, a new magnetic actuation method is provided which allows these devices to swim…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-04-22 Yacine El Alaoui-Faris , Jean-Baptiste Pomet , Stéphane Régnier , Laetitia Giraldi

Active flexible filaments form the classical continuum framework for modelling the locomotion of spermatozoa and algae driven by the periodic oscillation of flagella. This framework also applies to the locomotion of various artificial…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-10-14 John Severn , Eric Lauga
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