Related papers: Collinear swimmer propelling a cargo sphere at low…
We analyze a minimal model for a rigid spherical microswimmer and explore the consequences of its extended surface on the interplay between its self-propulsion and flow properties. The model is the first order representation of…
Metachronal swimming, the sequential beating of limbs with a small phase lag, is observed in many organisms at various scales, but has been studied mostly in the limits of high or low Reynolds numbers. Motivated by the swimming of brine…
Understanding confined flows of complex fluids requires simultaneous access to the mechanical behaviour of the liquid and the boundary condition at the interfaces. Here, we use evanescent wave microscopy to investigate near-surface flows of…
The problem of accretion of small particles by a sphere embedded in a mean flow is studied in the case where the particles undergo inelastic collisions with the solid object. The collision efficiency, which gives the flux of particles…
E. M. Purcell showed that a body has to perform non-reciprocal motion in order to propel itself in a highly viscous environment. The swimmer with one degree of freedom is bound to do reciprocal motion, whereby the center of mass of the…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of a flexible polymer tethered to a reflecting wall and subject to oscillatory linear flow are studied by numerical simulations. Polymer is confined in two dimensions and is modeled as…
We consider the motion of rigid bodies in a potential fluid subject to certain nonholonomic constraints and show that it is described by Euler--Poincar\'e--Suslov equations. In the 2-dimensional case, when the constraint is realized by a…
Microswimmers typically operate in complex environments. In biological systems, often diverse species are simultaneously present and interact with each other. Here, we derive a (time-dependent) particle-scale statistical description, namely…
A simple way to generate propulsion at low Reynolds number is to periodically oscillate a passive flexible filament. Here we present a macroscopic experimental investigation of such a propulsive mechanism. A robotic swimmer is constructed…
Analytical solutions in fluid dynamics can be used to elucidate the physics of complex flows and to serve as test cases for numerical models. In this work, we present the analytical solution for the acoustic boundary layer that develops…
A striking feature of the collective behavior of spherical microswimmers is that for sufficiently strong self-propulsion they phase-separate into a dense cluster coexisting with a low-density dis- ordered surrounding. Extending our previous…
We consider the Stokes system in $\mathbb R^3,$ deprived of $N$ spheres of radius $1/N,$ completed by constant boundary conditions on the spheres. This problem models the instantaneous response of a viscous fluid to an immersed cloud of…
We investigate generalized Navier-Stokes (GNS) equations that couple nonlinear advection with a generic linear instability. This analytically tractable minimal model for fluid flows driven by internal active stresses has recently been shown…
Artificial microswimmers, nano and microrobots, are essential in many applications from engineering to biology and medicine. We present a Stokesian Dynamics study of the dynamical properties and efficiency of one of the simplest artificial…
The paper carries on our previous investigations on the complementary version of Purcell's rotator: a low-Reynolds-number swimmer composed of three balls of equal radii. In the asymptotic regime of very long arms, the Stokes induced…
A simple exactly solvable kinetic model for the non-linear inelastic hard sphere Boltzmann equation is used to explore the relevance of hydrodynamics for a granular gas. The equation predicts a non-trivial homogeneous cooling state (HCS),…
We reconsider fluid dynamics for a self-propulsive swimmer in Stokes flow. With an exact definition of deformation of a swimmer, a proof is given to Purcell's scallop theorem including the body rotation. The breakdown of the theorem due to…
The present investigation deals with the dynamics of a two-degrees-of-freedom system which consists of a main linear oscillator and a strongly nonlinear absorber with small mass. The nonlinear oscillator has a softening hysteretic…
Microswimmers, especially in theoretical treatments, are generally taken to be completely inertia-free, since inertial effects on their motion are typically small and assuming their absence simplifies the problem considerably. Yet in nature…
In the limit of zero Reynolds number (Re), swimmers propel themselves exploiting a series of non-reciprocal body motions. For an artificial swimmer, a proper selection of the power source is required to drive its motion, in cooperation with…