Related papers: A deformable microswimmer in a swirl: capturing an…
Self-propelled particles can exhibit surprising non-equilibrium behaviors, and how they interact with obstacles or boundaries remains an important open problem. Here we show that chemically propelled micro-rods can be captured, with little…
We investigate the behavior of a treadmilling microswimmer in a two-dimensional unbounded domain with a semi-infinite no-slip wall. The wall can also be regarded as a probe or pipette inserted into the flow. We solve the governing evolution…
We numerically study the dynamics of a three-dimensional contractile fluid droplet in the bulk and under confinement. We show that varying activity leads to a variety of shapes and motile regimes whose motion is driven by an interplay…
Microswimmers, and among them aspirant microrobots, generally have to cope with flows where viscous forces are dominant, characterized by a low Reynolds number ($Re$). This implies constraints on the possible sequences of body motion, which…
We analyze the migration characteristics of a droplet in an oscillatory flow field in a parallel plate micro-confinement. Using phase filed formalism, we capture the dynamical evolution of the droplet over a wide range of the frequency of…
Microswimmer suspensions self-organize into complex spatio-temporal flow patterns, including vortex lattices and mesoscale turbulence. Here we explore the consequences for the motion of passive tracers, based on a continuum model for the…
Interactions between microorganisms and their complex flowing environments are essential in many biological systems. We develop a model for microswimmer dynamics in non-Newtonian Poiseuille flows. We predict that swimmers in…
Marine microorganisms must cope with complex flow patterns and even turbulence as they navigate the ocean. To survive they must avoid predation and find efficient energy sources. A major difficulty in analysing possible survival strategies…
We study the snapping instability of a spherical elastic shell induced by a viscous flow, the umbrella flipping problem when life is at low Reynolds numbers. We combine precision desktop-scale experiments, fluid-structure simulations, shell…
Living microorganisms are capable of a tactic response to external stimuli by swimming towards or away from the stimulus source; they do so by adapting their tactic signal transduction pathways to the environment. Their self-motility thus…
We identify the presence of a continuum percolation transition in model suspensions of pusher-type microswimmers. The clusters dynamically aggregate and disaggregate resulting from a competition of attractive and repulsive hydrodynamic and…
We study the fluid dynamics of two fish-like bodies with synchronised swimming patterns. Our studies are based on two-dimensional simulations of viscous incompressible flows. We distinguish between motion patterns that are externally…
Many microorganisms swim through gels and non-Newtonian fluids in their natural environments. In this paper, we focus on microorganisms which use flagella for propulsion. We address how swimming velocities are affected in nonlinearly…
Geometric confinements are frequently encountered in soft matter systems and in particular significantly alter the dynamics of swimming microorganisms in viscous media. Surface-related effects on the motility of microswimmers can lead to…
Swimming in circles occurs in a variety of situations at low Reynolds number. Here we propose a simple model for a swimmer that undergoes circular motion, generalising the model of a linear swimmer proposed by Najafi and Golestanian (Phys.…
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…
Self-propelled micron-size particles suspended in a fluid, like bacteria or synthetic microswimmers, are strongly non-equilibrium systems where particle motility breaks the microscopic detailed balance, often resulting in large-scale…
The swimming of cells, far from any boundary, can arise in the absence of long-range liquid-crystalline order within the cytoplasm, but simple models of this effect are lacking. Here we present a two-dimensional model of droplet…
A theoretical and experimental study of the spin-over mode induced by the elliptical instability of a flow contained in a slightly deformed rotating spherical shell is presented. This geometrical configuration mimics the liquid rotating…
We study the hydrodynamics of spherical spinners suspended in a Newtonian fluid at inertial regime. We observe a spontaneous condensation of the spinners into particle rich regions, at low but finite particle Reynolds numbers and volume…