Related papers: Microscale locomotion in a nematic liquid crystal
Cell motility in viscous fluids is ubiquitous and affects many biological processes, including reproduction, infection, and the marine life ecosystem. Here we review the biophysical and mechanical principles of locomotion at the small…
Motivated by problems arising in tear film dynamics, we present a model for the extensional flow of thin sheets of nematic liquid crystal. The rod-like molecules of these substances impart an elastic contribution to its response. We rescale…
Actuating periodically an elastic filament in a viscous liquid generally breaks the constraints of Purcell's scallop theorem, resulting in the generation of a net propulsive force. This observation suggests a method to design simple…
The swimming direction of biological or artificial microscale swimmers tends to be randomised over long time-scales by thermal fluctuations. Bacteria use various strategies to bias swimming behaviour and achieve directed motion against a…
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…
Swimming cells often have to self-propel through fluids displaying non-Newtonian rheology. While past theoretical work seems to indicate that stresses arising from complex fluids should systematically hinder low-Reynolds number locomotion,…
Experiments have recently shown the feasibility of utilising bacteria as micro-scale robotic devices, with special attention paid to the development of bacteria-driven micro-swimmers taking advantage of built-in actuation and sensing…
Recent experiments have shown that the nematode {\it T. aceti} can assemble into collectively undulating groups at the edge of fluid drops. This coordinated state consists of metachronal waves and drives fluid circulation inside the drop.…
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…
Taylor's swimming sheet is a classical model of microscale propulsion and pumping. Many biological fluids and substances are fibrous, having a preferred direction in their microstructure; for example cervical mucus is formed of polymer…
We review recent work on active colloids or swimmers, such as self-propelled microorganisms, phoretic colloidal particles, and artificial micro-robotic systems, moving in fluid-like environments. These environments can be water-like and…
We study the dynamics of a driven spherical colloidal particle moving in a fluid with a broken rotational symmetry. Using a nematic liquid crystal as a model, we demonstrate that when the applied force is not aligned along or perpendicular…
We discuss the locomotion of a three-sphere microswimmer in a viscoelastic structured fluid characterized by typical length and time scales. We derive a general expression to link the average swimming velocity to the sphere mobilities. In…
Transport phenomena of microswimmers in fluid flows play a crucial role in various biological processes, including bioconvection and cell sorting. In this paper, we investigate the dispersion behavior of chiral microswimmers in a simple…
The acoustofluidic method holds great promise for manipulating microorganisms. When exposed to the steady vortex structures of acoustic streaming flow, these microorganisms exhibit intriguing dynamic behaviors, such as hydrodynamic trapping…
Swimming bacteria in passive nematics in the form of lyotropic liquid crystals are defined as a new class of active matter known as living liquid crystals in recent studies. It has also been shown that liquid crystal solutions are promising…
We investigate the connection between the transport properties and the thermodynamics of electronic systems with a tendency to form broken-symmetry mesophases evocative of the physics of liquid crystals. Through a hydrodynamic approach to…
Biological microswimmers such as bacteria and sperm cells often encounter complex biological fluid environments. Here we use the well-known squirmer microswimmer model to show the importance of the local fluid microstructure and…
Many bacteria live in natural and clinical environments with abundant macromolecular polymers. Macromolecular fluids commonly display viscoelasticity and non-Newtonian rheological behavior; it is unclear how these complex-fluid properties…
Small organisms (e.g., bacteria) and artificial microswimmers move due to a combination of active swimming and passive Brownian motion. Considering a simplified linear three-sphere swimmer, we study how the swimmer size regulates the…