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Related papers: Effect of body deformability on microswimming

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The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-09-14 Gaojin Li , Eric Lauga , Arezoo M. Ardekani

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-12-22 Sankalp Nambiar , John S Wettlaufer

Many microorganisms swim by performing larger non-reciprocal shape deformations that are initiated locally by molecular motors. However, it remains unclear how decentralized shape control determines the movement of the entire organism.…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-05-14 Benedikt Hartl , Michael Levin , Andreas Zöttl

The self-propelled motion of microscopic bodies immersed in a fluid medium is studied using molecular dynamics simulation. The advantage of the atomistic approach is that the detailed level of description allows complete freedom in…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2007-12-06 D. C. Rapaport

Biological microswimmers often encounter deformable boundaries in physiological conditions; for instance, the viscoelastic walls of reproductive tract during migration of spermatozoa, or host tissue during early bacterial biofilm formation.…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-08-07 Smita S. Sontakke , Aneesha Kajampady , Mohd Suhail Rizvi , Ranabir Dey

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2009-09-29 Eric Lauga

We analyze a minimal model for a rigid spherical microswimmer and explore the consequences of its extended surface on the interplay between its self-propulsion and flow properties. The model is the first order representation of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2017-12-06 Tapan Chandra Adhyapak , Sara Jabbari-Farouji

The presence of obstacles is intuitively expected to hinder the diffusive transport of micro-swimmers. However, for chiral micro-swimmers, a low density of obstacles near a surface can enhance their diffusive behavior, due to the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-05-27 Danne M. van Roon , Giorgio Volpe , Margarida M. Telo da Gama , Nuno A. M. Araújo

We present numerical simulations of simplified models for swimming organisms or robots, using chordwise flexible elastic plates. We focus on the tip vortices originating from three-dimensional effects due to the finite span of the plate.…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2018-03-21 T. Engels , D. Kolomenskiy , K. Schneider , J. Sesterhenn

Microswimming cells and robots exhibit diverse behaviours due to both their swimming and their environment. One of the core environmental features impacting inertialess swimming is background flows. While the influence of select flows,…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2025-10-30 Eamonn A. Gaffney , Kenta Ishimoto , Benjamin J. Walker

When a rigid body collides with a liquid surface with sufficient velocity, it creates a splash curtain above the surface and entrains air behind the sphere, creating a cavity below the surface. While cavity dynamics have been studied for…

Recent experiments have shown that floating ferromagnetic beads, under the influence of an oscillating background magnetic field, can move along a liquid-air interface in a sustained periodic locomotion [Lumay et al., Soft Matter, 2013, 9,…

A new mechanism for micro-swimmer motion in an aquatic environment, which implies light-induced polarization perturbations as a motivation for its motion, is proposed. The mechanism assumes that natural light leads to an enhancement of the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-05-07 Bohdan Lev , Oleksandr Cherniak

The swimming of a two-sphere system oscillating in a viscous fluidis studied on the basis of simplified equations of motion which take account of both friction and inertial effects. In the model the friction follows from an Oseen…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-08-17 B. U. Felderhof

It has been argued that an extended, quasi-rigid body evolving freely in curved spacetime can deviate from its natural trajectory by simply performing cyclic deformations. More interestingly, in the limit of rapid cycles, the amount of…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2017-03-28 Rodrigo Andrade e Silva , George E. A. Matsas , Daniel A. T. Vanzella

In this paper we study swimming of a model organism, the so-called Taylor's swimming sheet, in a viscoelastic fluid close to a solid boundary. This situation comprises natural habitats of many swimming microorganisms, and while previous…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2018-01-29 Thomas R. Ives , Alexander Morozov

To mimic the motion of biological swimmers in bodily fluids, a novel experimental system of micellar solubilization driven active droplets in a visco-elastic polymeric solution is presented. The visco-elastic nature of the medium,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2023-05-12 Prateek Dwivedi , Atishay Shrivastava , Naveen Tiwari , Dipin Pillai , Rahul Mangal

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-08-22 Sridhar Bulusu , Andreas Zöttl

Microswimmers often exhibit surprising patterns due to the nonequilibrium nature of their dynamics. Collectively, suspensions of microswimmers appear as a liquid whose properties set it apart from its passive counterpart. To understand the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-05-22 Fabian Jan Schwarzendahl , Marco G. Mazza

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2014-09-11 Mitsusuke Tarama , Andreas M. Menzel , Hartmut Löwen