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Related papers: The Optimal Swimming Sheet

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This work studies the motion of Purcell's three-link microswimmer in viscous flow, by using perturbation expansion of its dynamics under small-amplitude strokes. Leading-order expressions and next-order correction terms for the displacement…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2016-09-28 Oren Wiezel , Yizhar Or

An asymptotic approach is employed to study the swimming speed of a two-dimensional Taylor swimming sheet beneath a Brinkman layer of finite thickness. This configuration is representative of a swimmer confined within a porous non-Newtonian…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2025-07-23 Tasawar Iqbal , Catherine Penington , Christian Thomas , Lyndon Koens

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

We consider a swimmer consisting of a collinear assembly of three spheres connected by two slender rods. This swimmer can propel itself forward by varying the lengths of the rods in a way that is not invariant under time reversal. Although…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2019-07-09 Babak Nasouri , Andrej Vilfan , Ramin Golestanian

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…

Biological Physics · Physics 2014-11-25 Emily E. Riley , Eric Lauga

We study the microscale propulsion of a rotating helical filament confined by a cylindrical tube, using a boundary-element method for Stokes flow that accounts for helical symmetry. We determine the effect of confinement on swimming speed…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2014-01-09 Bin Liu , Kenneth S. Breuer , Thomas R. Powers

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

We propose minimal models of one-, two- and three-dimensional micro-swimmers at low Reynolds number with a periodic non-reciprocal motion. These swimmers are either "pushers" or "pullers" of fluid along the swimming axis, or combination of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2010-04-30 Nobuhiko Watari , Ronald G. Larson

Many small organisms self-propel in viscous fluids using travelling wave-like deformation of their bodies or appendages. Examples include small nematodes moving through soil using whole-body undulations or spermatozoa swimming through mucus…

Biological Physics · Physics 2015-07-02 Emily E. Riley , Eric Lauga

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

We investigate the self-locomotion of an elongated microswimmer by virtue of the unidirectional tangential surface treadmilling. We show that the propulsion could be almost frictionless, as the microswimmer is propelled forward with the…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2009-11-13 Alexander M. Leshansky , Oded Kenneth , Omri Gat , Joseph E. Avron

We consider arbitrary-shaped microswimmers of spherical topology and propose a framework for expressing their slip velocity in terms of tangential basis functions defined on the boundary of the swimmer using the Helmholtz decomposition.…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2026-04-14 Kausik Das , Hai Zhu , Marc Bonnet , Shravan Veerapaneni

We investigate 3-dimensional flagellar swimming in a fluid with a sparse network of stationary obstacles or fibers. The Brinkman equation is used to model the average fluid flow where a flow-dependent term, including a resistance parameter…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2019-03-27 Nguyenho Ho , Karin Leiderman , Sarah Olson

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

Active diffusiophoresis - swimming through interaction with a self-generated, neutral, solute gradient - is a paradigm for autonomous motion at the micrometer scale. We study this propulsion mechanism within a linear response theory.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-05-30 Benedikt Sabass , Udo Seifert

We study two microswimmers consisting of a spherical rigid head and a passive elastic tail. In the first one the tail is clamped to the head, and the system oscillates under the action of an external torque. In the second one, head and tail…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2017-02-02 Giancarlo Cicconofri , Antonio DeSimone

Microorganisms naturally move in microstructured fluids. Using the simulation method of multi-particle collision dynamics, we study an undulatory Taylor line swimming in a two-dimensional microchannel and in a cubic lattice of obstacles,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-04-11 Jan L. Münch , Davod Alizadehrad , Sujin Babu , Holger Stark

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…

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,…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2014-03-19 J. Rodrigo Vélez-Cordero , Eric Lauga

Cilia and flagella are actively bending slender organelles, performing functions such as motility, feeding and embryonic symmetry breaking. We review the mechanics of viscous-dominated microscale flow, including time-reversal symmetry, drag…

Quantitative Methods · Quantitative Biology 2013-09-06 Thomas D. Montenegro-Johnson , Andrew A. Smith , David J. Smith , Daniel Loghin , John R. Blake