Related papers: Surface Tension dominates Insect Flight on Fluid I…
The effect of air viscosity on the flow around an insect wing increases as insect size decreases. For the smallest insects (wing length R below 1 mm), the viscous effect is so large that lift-generation mechanisms used by their larger…
While engineers put lots of effort, resources, and time in building insect scale micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) that fly like insects, insects themselves are the real masters of flight. What if we would use living insect as platform for MAV…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
The flow in a Hele-Shaw cell with a time-increasing gap poses a unique shrinking interface problem. When the upper plate of the cell is lifted perpendicularly at a prescribed speed, the exterior less viscous fluid penetrates the interior…
This study systematically investigates the dynamics of the bacterial transition from free-swimming to surface adhesion, a process characterized by both height $h$ and inclination angle $\Psi$. The surface entrapment process is divided into…
Motivated by studies suggesting that the patterns exhibited by the collectively expanding fronts of thin cells during the closing of a wound [Mark et al., Biophys. J., 98:361-370, 2010] and the shapes of single cells crawling on surfaces…
Study of the locomotion of a centipede (L. forficatus) at the air-water interface reveals that it does not predominantly use its 14 leg pairs to locomote; unlike most swimmers which propagate head-to-tail body bending waves, this species…
We analyze the surface tension exerted at the interface between an active fluid and a solid boundary in terms of tangential forces. Focusing on active systems known to possess an equation of state for the pressure, we show that interfacial…
The interaction of an object with an unsteady flow is non-trivial and is still far from being fully understood. When an airfoil or hydrofoil, for example, undergoes time-dependent motion, nonlinear flow phenomena such as dynamic stall can…
Interactions between swimming cells and surfaces are essential to many microbiological processes, from bacterial biofilm formation to human fertilization. However, in spite of their fundamental importance, relatively little is known about…
Drag-based swimming with rowing appendages, fins, and webbed feet is a widely adapted locomotion form in aquatic animals. To develop effective underwater and swimming vehicles, a wide range of bioinspired drag-based paddles have been…
Molecular-scale interactions between solvated macromolecules and solid surfaces govern a large number of processes, from biology to engineering. Yet, despite extensive characterization at the macroscopic level, our molecular understanding…
Approximately half of the existing winged-insect species are of very small size (wing length about 0.3-4 mm); they are referred to as miniature insects. Yet until recently, much of what we know about the mechanics of insect flight was…
Cilia and flagella are hair-like appendages that protrude from the surface of a variety of eukaryotic cells and deform in a wavelike fashion to transport fluids and propel cells. Motivated by the ubiquity of non-Newtonian fluids in biology,…
When a less viscous Newtonian fluid displaces an aging aqueous clay suspension in a confined space, a rich array of interfacial patterns emerges due to a predominantly viscous instability. In the present work, we controlled the mechanical…
Many kinds of adult Lepidoptera insects possess a long proboscis which is used to suck liquids and has the coiling and uncoiling movements. Although experiments revealed qualitatively that the coiling movement is governed by the hydraulic…
How can dense biological tissue maintain sharp boundaries between coexisting cell populations? We explore this question within a simple vertex model for cells, focusing on the role of topology and tissue surface tension. We show that the…
A fluid in contact with a flat structureless wall constitutes the simplest interface system, but the fluid-wall interfacial tension cannot be trivially and even unequivocally determined due to the ambiguity in identifying the precise…
The sliding motion of aqueous droplets on hydrohobic surfaces leads to charge separation at the trailing edge, with implications from triple-line friction to hydrovoltaic energy generation. Charges deposited on the solid surface have been…
Medium and large insects in normal hovering have horizontal, planar up- and downstrokes1-4. The lift of the two half-strokes, generated by the leading-edge vortex, provides the weight-supporting vertical force. But for small insects (wing…