Related papers: Motion planning and motility maps for flagellar mi…
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…
Contrary to microbial taxis, where a tactic response to external stimuli is controlled by complex chemical pathways acting like sensor-actuator loops, taxis of artificial microswimmers is a purely stochastic effect associated with a…
Inspired by the classical Kepler and Rutherford problem, we investigate an analogous set-up in the context of active microswimmers: the behavior of a deformable microswimmer in a swirl flow. First we identify new steady bound states in the…
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…
Microswimmers are encountered in a wide variety of biophysical settings. When interacting with flow fields, they show interesting dynamical features such as trapping, clustering, and preferential orientation. One important step towards the…
Magnetically driven artificial microswimmers have the potential to revolutionize many biomedical technologies, such as minimally-invasive microsurgery, micro-particle manipulation, and localized drug delivery. However, many of these…
Many biological microorganisms and artificial microswimmers react to external cues of environmental gradients by changing their swimming directions. We study here the behavior of eukarytic flagellated microswimmers in linear viscosity…
In this paper we are interested in optimizing the shape of multi-flagellated helical microswimmers. Mimicking the propagation of helical waves along the flagella, they self-propel by rotating their tails. The swimmer's dynamics is computed…
We theoretically and computationally study the low-Reynolds-number hydrodynamics of a linear active microswimmer surfing on a compressible thin fluid layer characterized by an odd viscosity. Since the underlying three-dimensional fluid is…
We discuss a two-dimensional model for the dynamics of axonemal deformations driven by internally generated forces of molecular motors. Our model consists of an elastic filament pair connected by active elements. We derive the dynamic…
We present and analyze a theoretical model for the dynamics and interactions of "capillary surfers," which are millimetric objects that self-propel while floating at the interface of a vibrating fluid bath. In our companion paper [1], we…
Ciliated microswimmers and flagellated bacteria alter their swimming trajectories to follow the direction of an applied electric field exhibiting electrotaxis. Both for matters of application and physical modelling, it is instructive to…
Living microorganisms are capable of a tactic response to external stimuli by swimming towards or away from the stimulus source; they do so by adapting their tactic signal transduction pathways to the environment. Their self-motility thus…
We study the dynamics of a prolate spheroidal microswimmer in Poiseuille flow for different flow geometries. When moving between two parallel plates or in a cylindrical microchannel, the swimmer performs either periodic swinging or periodic…
The hydrodynamic flow field generated by self-propelled active particles and swimming microorganisms is strongly altered by the presence of nearby boundaries in a viscous flow. Using a simple model three-linked sphere swimmer, we show that…
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…
Micro-swimmers put into motion by a rotating magnetic field have provided interesting challenges both in engineering and in mathematical modelling. We study here the dynamics of a permanent-magnetic rigid body submitted to a…
We present an automated procedure for the design of optimal actuation for flagellar magnetic microswimmers based on numerical optimization. Using this method, a new magnetic actuation method is provided which allows these devices to swim…
Flagellated microswimmers are ubiquitous in natural habitats. Understanding the hydrodynamic behavior of these cells is of paramount interest, owing to their applications in bio-medical engineering and disease spreading. Since the last two…
The majority of studies on self-propelled particles and microswimmers concentrates on objects that do not feature a deterministic bending of their trajectory. However, perfect axial symmetry is hardly found in reality, and shape-asymmetric…