Related papers: Undulatory swimming in shear-thinning fluids: Expe…
Many organisms live in confined fluidic environments such as the thin liquid layers on the skin of host organisms or in partially- saturated soil. We investigate the collective behaviour of nematodes in a thin liquid layer, which was first…
In this fluid mechanics video, we explore the kinematics of chemotaxing sperm cells (sea urchin, \textit{Arbacia punctulata}) swimming in a chemoattractant gradient. We demonstrate that the complex swimming trajectories resulting in…
We investigate the dynamics of \textbf{\textit{Lumbriculus variegatus}} in water-saturated sediment beds to understand limbless locomotion in the benthic zone found at the bottom of lakes and oceans. These slender aquatic worms are observed…
Swimming of a sphere in a viscous incompressible fluid is studied on the basis of the Navier-Stokes equations for wave-type distortions of the spherical shape. At sizable values of the dimensionless scale number the mean swimming velocity…
The motion of biological micro-robots -- similar to that of swimming microorganisms such as bacteria or spermatozoa -- is governed by different physical rules than what we experience in our daily life. This is particularly due to the…
Microswimmers can acquire information on the surrounding fluid by sensing mechanical queues. They can then navigate in response to these signals. We analyse this navigation by combining deep reinforcement learning with direct numerical…
Many microorganisms swim through gels, materials with nonzero zero-frequency elastic shear modulus, such as mucus. Biological gels are typically heterogeneous, containing both a structural scaffold (network) and a fluid solvent. We analyze…
We present a modification of a recently developed volume of fluid method for multiphase problems, so that it can be used in conjunction with a fractional step-method and fast Poisson solver, and validate it with standard benchmark problems.…
There is a recent surge of interest in the behavior of active particles that can at the same time align their direction of movement and synchronize their oscillations, known as swarmalators. While theoretical and numerical models of such…
We present the results of a numerical study of a model of the hydrodynamics of a sheared nematogenic fluid, taking into account the effects of order parameter stresses on the velocity profile, but allowing spatial variations only in the…
Suspensions of motile cells are model systems for understanding the unique mechanical properties of living materials which often consist of ensembles of self-propelled particles. We present here a quantitative comparison of theory against…
Swimming in low-Reynolds-number fluids requires the breaking of time-reversal symmetry and centrosymmetry. Microswimmers, often with asymmetric shapes, exhibit nonreciprocal motions or exploit nonequilibrium processes to propel. The role of…
An axisymmetric squirmer in a Bingham viscoplastic fluid is studied numerically to determine the effect of a yield stress environment on locomotion. The nonlinearity of the governing equations necessitates numerical methods, which is…
The swimming behavior of bacteria and other microorganisms is sensitive to the physical properties of the fluid in which they swim. Mucus, biofilms, and artificial liquid-crystalline solutions are all examples of fluids with some degree of…
We report a numerical study addressing the dynamics of compound vesicles confined in a channel under shear flow. The system comprises a smaller vesicle embedded within a larger one and can be used to mimic, for example, leukocytes or…
We use the boundary element method to study the low-Reynolds number locomotion of a spherical model microorganism in a circular tube. The swimmer propels itself by tangen- tial or normal surface motion in a tube whose radius is on the order…
Microswimmers display an intriguing ability to navigate through fluids with spatially varying viscosity, a behavior known as viscotaxis, which plays a crucial role in guiding their motion. In this study, we reveal that the orientation…
The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…
Particular types of plankton in aquatic ecosystems can coordinate their motion depending on the local flow environment to reach regions conducive to their growth or reproduction. Investigating their swimming strategies with regard to the…
Limbless locomotors, from microscopic worms to macroscopic snakes, traverse complex, heterogeneous natural environments typically using undulatory body wave propagation. Theoretical and robophysical models typically emphasize body…