Related papers: Hydrodynamics of Micro-swimmers in Films
Swimming microorganisms often self propel in fluids with complex rheology. While past theoretical work indicates that fluid viscoelasticity should hinder their locomotion, recent experiments on waving swimmers suggest a possible…
Continuum simulation is employed to study ion transport and fluid flow through a nanopore in a solid-state membrane under an applied potential drop. Results show the existence of concentration polarization layers on the surfaces of the…
Cells swimming in confined environments are attracted by surfaces. We measure the steady-state distribution of smooth-swimming bacteria (Escherichia coli) between two glass plates. In agreement with earlier studies, we find a strong…
We study the coupled hydrodynamics between a motile slender microswimmer and a deformable interface that separates two Newtonian fluid regions. From the disturbance field generated by the swimming motion, we quantitatively characterize the…
Electrohydrodynamic instabilities of fluid-fluid interfaces can be exploited in various microfluidic applications in order to enhance mixing, replicate well-controlled patterns or generate drops of a particular size. In this work, we study…
Manipulation of small-scale particles across streamlines is the elementary task of microfluidic devices. Many such devices operate at very low Reynolds numbers and deflect particles using arrays of obstacles, but a systematic quantification…
We study contact line induced instabilities for a thin film of fluid under destabilizing gravitational force in three dimensional setting. In the previous work (Phys. Fluids, {\bf 22}, 052105 (2010)), we considered two dimensional flow,…
Many microswimmers are able to swim through viscous fluids by employing periodic non-reciprocal deformations of their appendages. Here we use a simple microswimmer model inspired by swimming biflagellates which consists of a spherical cell…
Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…
We describe the dynamics of three-dimensional fluid vesicles in steady shear flow in the vicinity of a wall. This is analyzed numerically at low Reynolds numbers using a boundary element method. The area-incompressible vesicle exhibits…
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 investigate the effect of cooperative interactions in an ensemble of microorganisms, modelled as self-propelled disk-like and rod-like particles, in a three-dimensional turbulent flow to show flocking as an emergent phenomenon. Building…
The description of hydrodynamic interactions between a particle and the surrounding liquid, down to the nanometer scale, is of primary importance since confined liquids are ubiquitous in many natural and technological situations. In this…
Cells and other soft particles are often forced to flow in confined geometries in both laboratory and natural environments, where the elastic deformation induces an additional drag and pressure drop across the particle. In contrast with…
We employ three numerical methods to explore the motion of low Reynolds number swimmers, modeling the hydrodynamic interactions by means of the Oseen tensor approximation, lattice Boltzmann simulations and multiparticle collision dynamics.…
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…
We combine a general formulation of microswimmmer equations of motion with a numerical bead-shell model to calculate the hydrodynamic interactions with the fluid, from which the swimming speed, power and efficiency are extracted. From this…
Microswimmers are often found in heterogeneous and crowded environments within narrow conduits under external flow conditions, enabling them to perform interesting translational and rotational maneuvers, such as swimming in the upstream…
We consider a colony of point-like self-propelled surfactant particles (swimmers) without direct interactions that cover a thin liquid layer on a solid support. Although the particles predominantly swim normal to the free film surface,…
In isotropic fluids like water, micrometer-scale swimmers have evolved swim strokes to translate despite their tiny size. As described by Purcell in his Scallop Theorem, reciprocal motions, like those performed by a scallop, cannot drive…