Related papers: Flexible helical yarn swimmers
Liquid crystalline polymers are materials of considerable scientific interest and technological value to society [1-3]. An important subset of such materials exhibit rubber-like elasticity; these can combine the remarkable optical…
We show that a viscous liquid confined between two low thermal conductive surfaces (Al2O3) emit a thermal response upon applying a low frequency (Hz) shear excitation. Hot and cold thermal waves are observed in situ at atmospheric pressure…
Inspired by the snap-through action of a steel hairclip, we propose a design method for in-plane prestressed mechanisms that exhibit biomimetic morphing and high locomotion performance. Compliant bistable flapping mechanisms are fabricated…
The swimming of a sphere by means of radial helical surface waves is studied on the basis of the Stokes equations. Explicit expressions are derived for the matrices characterizing the mean translational and rotational swimming velocities…
We present a detailed theoretical study which demonstrates that electrokinetic effects can also play a role in the motion of metallic-insulator spherical Janus particles. Essential to our analysis is the identification of the fact that the…
We computationally investigate the active transport of tangentially-driven polymers with varying degrees of flexibility and activity in two-dimensional square lattices of obstacles. Tight periodic confinement induces notable conformational…
In this paper, we speculate on a possible application of Liquid Crystal Elastomers to the field of soft robotics. In particular, we study a concept for limbless locomotion that is amenable to miniaturisation. For this purpose, we formulate…
An artificial microswimmer drifts in response to spatio-temporal modulations of an activating suspension medium. We consider two competing mechanisms capable of influencing its tactic response: angular fluctuations, which help it explore…
We consider an explicit model of a semiflexible filament moving in two dimensions on a gliding assay of motor proteins, which attach to and detach from filament segments stochastically, with a detachment rate that depends on the local load…
Microorganisms inhabit viscoelastic environments, where their locomotion can deform polymers and trigger local complex viscoelastic responses. However, a systematic approach to quantify such responses remains lacking. Here, we propose a…
Both natural and artificial small-scale swimmers may often self-propel in environments subject to complex geometrical constraints. While most past theoretical work on low-Reynolds number locomotion addressed idealised geometrical…
In the absence of inertia, a reciprocal swimmer achieves no net motion in a viscous Newtonian fluid. Here, we investigate the ability of a reciprocally actuated particle to translate through a complex fluid that possesses a network using…
After a short review on the physics of pulled threads and their mechanical properties, the paper reports and discusses on the strand elongation of disordered columnar phases, hexagonal or lamello-columnar, of small molecules or polymers.…
Microorganisms are rarely found in Nature swimming freely in an unbounded fluid. Instead, they typically encounter other organisms, hard walls, or deformable boundaries such as free interfaces or membranes. Hydrodynamic interactions between…
We analyze a model of mutually-propelled filaments suspended in a two-dimensional solvent. The system undergoes a mean-field isotropic-nematic transition for large enough filament concentrations and the nematic order parameter is allowed to…
We study the elastic properties of a rigid filament in a bath of self-propelled particles. We find that while fully flexible filaments swell monotonically upon increasing the strength of the propelling force, rigid filaments soften for…
We discuss a micro-swimmer model made of three spheres actuated by an internal active time-periodic force, tied by an elastic potential and submitted to hydrodynamic interactions with thermal noise. The dynamical approach we use, replacing…
Active semiflexible filament collectives, ranging from motor-driven cytoskeletal filaments to slender organisms such as cyanobacteria and worm aggregates, abound in nature. Yet how activity and flexibility jointly govern their organization,…
We investigate the elastic wave propagation in various hyperelastic materials which subjected to simple-shear deformation. Two compressible types of three conventional hyperelastic models are considered. We found pure elastic wave modes can…
We analyze experimentally the shape of a long elastic filament rotating in a viscous liquid. We identify a continuous but sharp transition from a straight to an helical shape, resulting from the competition between viscous stresses and…