Related papers: Setting the pace of microswimmers: when increasing…
Most aquatic vertebrates swim by lateral flapping of their bodies and caudal fins. While much effort has been devoted to understanding the flapping kinematics and its influence on the swimming efficiency, little is known about the stability…
Motivated by the swimming of sperm in the non-Newtonian fluids of the female mammalian reproductive tract, we examine the swimming of filaments in the nonlinear viscoelastic Upper Convected Maxwell model. We obtain the swimming velocity and…
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…
The aim of this paper is to calculate the time dependence of the mean position (and orientation) of a fluid particle when a fluid system at thermodynamic equilibrium is submitted to a mechanical action. The starting point of this novel…
A new microscopic formula for the viscosity of liquids and solids is derived rigorously from a first-principles (microscopically reversible) Hamiltonian for particle-bath atomistic motion. The derivation is done within the framework of…
The emerging field of self-driven active particles in fluid environments has recently created significant interest in the biophysics and bioengineering communities owing to their promising future biomedical and technological applications.…
We numerically investigate the motion of active artificial microswimmers diffusing in a fuel concentration gradient. We observe that, in the steady state, their probability density accumulates in the low-concentration regions, whereas a…
We explore in this paper the phenomenon of photofocusing: a coupling between flow vorticity and biased swimming of microalgae toward a light source that produces a focusing of the microswimmer suspension. We combine experiments that…
In this article, we consider a swimmer (i.e. a self-deformable body) immersed in a fluid, the flow of which is governed by the stationary Stokes equations. This model is relevant for studying the locomotion of microorganisms or micro robots…
The swimming of a deformable planar slab in a viscous incompressible fluid is studied on the basis of the Navier-Stokes equations. A continuum of plane wave displacements, symmetric on both sides of the slab and characterized by a…
We use particle simulations to reveal two distinct propulsion mechanisms for a scallop-like swimmer to locomote itself in granular media by reciprocally flapping its wings. Based on the discrete element method, we examine the kinematics and…
We conduct experiments with force-free magnetically-driven rigid helical swimmers in Newtonian and viscoelastic (Boger) fluids. By varying the sizes of the swimmer body and its helical tail, we show that the impact of viscoelasticity…
The dynamics of flow within a material transport network is dependent upon the dynamics of its power source. Responding to a change of these dynamics is critical for the fitness of living flow networks, e.g. the animal vasculature, which…
The dynamics and motion of multi-ciliated microswimmers with a spherical body and a small number N (with 5 < N < 60) of cilia with length comparable to the body radius, is investigated by mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations. A metachronal…
Small objects can swim by generating around them fields or gradients which in turn induce fluid motion past their surface by phoretic surface effects. We quantify for arbitrary swimmer shapes and surface patterns, how efficient swimming…
Micro-swimmer locomotion in heterogeneous media is increasingly relevant in biological physics due to the prevalence of microorganisms in complex environments. A model for such porous media is the Brinkman fluid which accounts for a sparse…
Systems of motile microorganisms exhibit a multitude of collective phenomena, including motility-induced phase separation and turbulence. Sensing of the environment and adaptation of movement plays an essential role in the emergent…
Catalytic colloidal swimmers that propel due to self-generated fluid flows exhibit strong affinity for surfaces. We here report experimental measurements of significantly different velocities of such microswimmers in the vicinity of…
Using classical as well as ab-initio molecular dynamics simulations, we calculate the frequency-dependent shear viscosity of pure water and water-glycerol mixtures. In agreement with recent experiments, we find deviations from…
By synergistically combining modeling, simulation and experiments, we show that there exists a regime of self-propulsion in which the inertia in the fluid dynamics can be separated from that of the swimmer. This is demonstrated by the…