Related papers: Mixing by microorganisms in stratified fluids
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…
We consider a suspension of active rigid particles (swimmers) in a steady Stokes flow, where particles are distributed according to a stationary ergodic random process, and we study its homogenization in the macroscopic limit. A key point…
Formation of step-like 'density staircase' distributions induced by stratification and turbulence has been widely studied and can be explained by the 'instability' of a sufficiently strongly stably stratified turbulent flow due to the…
One of the principal mechanisms by which surfaces and interfaces affect microbial life is by perturbing the hydrodynamic flows generated by swimming. By summing a recursive series of image systems we derive a numerically tractable…
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…
In this paper we study the motion of three linked ellipses moving through a viscous fluid in two dimensions. The angles between the ellipses change with time in a specified manner (the gait) and the resulting time varying configuration is…
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 combine a DEM simulation with a stochastic process to model the movement of spherical particles in a turbulent channel flow. With this model we investigate the mixing properties of two species of particles flowing through the channel. We…
Although the motility of the flagellated bacteria, Escherichia coli, has been widely studied, the effect of viscosity on swimming speed remains controversial. The swimming mode of wild-type E.coli is often idealized as a "run-and- tumble"…
Predicting how much mixing occurs when a given amount of energy is injected into a Boussinesq fluid is a longstanding problem in stratified turbulence. The huge number of degrees of freedom involved in those processes renders extremely…
We study the problem of sinking particles in a realistic oceanic flow, with major energetic structures in the mesoscale, focussing in the range of particle sizes and densities appropriate for marine biogenic particles. Our aim is to unify…
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 consider the efficiency of self-phoretic colloidal particles (swimmers) as a function of the heterogeneity in the surface reaction rate. The set of fluid, species, and electrostatic continuity equations is solved analytically using a…
We study the characteristics of fluid-fluid displacement in simple mixed-wet porous micromodels numerically using a dynamic pore network model. The porous micromodel consists of distinct water-wet and oil-wet regions, whose fractions are…
The swimming of an assembly of rigid spheres immersed in a viscous fluid of infinite extent is studied in low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The instantaneous swimming velocity and rate of dissipation are expressed in terms of the…
In this fluid dynamics video, we demonstrate the microscale mixing enhancement of passive tracer particles in suspensions of swimming microalgae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. These biflagellated, single-celled eukaryotes (10 micron diameter)…
Micro-organisms can be classified into three different types according to their size. We study the efficiency of the swimming of micro-organism in two dimensional fluid as a device for helping the explanation of this hierarchy in the size.…
Mesozooplankton aggregations undergoing vertical migrations in the upper ocean have been hypothesized to have an important role in the redistribution of carbon, nutrients, and oxygen via biogenic hydrodynamic transport (BHT). While…
We present a unified discussion of three types of near-spherical amoeboid microswimmers, driven by periodic, axially symmetric, achiral deformations (swim strokes): a solid deformable body, a vesicle with incompressible fluid membrane, and…
Bacteria in aquatic environments often interact with particulate matter. A key example is bacterial degradation of marine snow responsible for carbon export from the upper ocean in the biological pump. The ecological interaction between…