Related papers: Clustering instability of focused swimmers
The stability of a flexible fluid membrane containing a distribution of mobile, active proteins (e.g. proton pumps) is shown to depend on the structure and functional asymmetry of the proteins. A stable active membrane is in a…
Elastic turbulence is a spatially and temporally disordered flow state appearing in viscoelastic fluids at vanishing fluid inertia and large elasticity. The resulting flows have broad technological interest, particularly to enhance mixing…
We study the orientation statistics of spheroidal, axisymmetric microswimmers, with shapes ranging from disks to rods, swimming in chaotic, moderately turbulent flows. Numerical simulations show that rod-like active particles preferentially…
The instability and nonlinear evolution of directional ocean waves is investigated numerically by means of simulations of the governing kinetic equation for narrow-band surface waves. Our simulation results reveal the onset of the…
We explore pattern formation in an active fluid system involving two chemical species that regulate active stress: a fast-diffusing species ($A$) and a slow-diffusing species ($I$). The growth of species $A$ is modelled using a nonlinear…
Previous particle-based computer simulations have revealed a significantly more pronounced tendency of spontaneous global polar ordering in puller (contractile) microswimmer suspensions than in pusher (extensile) suspensions. We here…
Many biological fluids are composed of suspended polymers immersed in a viscous fluid. A prime example is mucus, where the polymers are also known to form a network. While the presence of this microstructure is linked with an overall…
An array of spheres descending slowly through a viscous fluid always clumps [J.M. Crowley, J. Fluid Mech. {\bf 45}, 151 (1971)]. We show that anisotropic particle shape qualitatively transforms this iconic instability of collective…
We study the distribution of swimming micro-organisms advected by a model turbulent flow and attracted towards a localised light source through phototaxis. It is shown that particles aggregate along a dynamical attractor with fractal…
We consider the stability of a system of equations which are a singular perturbation of the incompressible rigid-plastic flow equations used to model granular flow. A linear stability analysis shows that solutions of these equations are…
The dynamical system for inertial particles in fluid flow has both attracting and repelling regions, the interplay of which can localize particles. In laminar flow experiments we find that particles, initially moving throughout the fluid…
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,…
We use linear stability analysis to show that an isotropic phase of elongated particles with dipolar flow fields can develop nematic order as a result of their activity. We argue that ordering is favoured if the particles are flow-aligning…
We explore flow of a completely wetting fluid in a funnel, with particular focus on contact line instabilities at the fluid front. While the flow in a funnel may be related to a number of other flow configurations as limiting cases,…
A Rayleigh-Taylor-like instability of a dense colloidal layer under gravity in a capillary of microfluidic dimensions is considered. We access all relevant lengthscales with particle-level microscopy and computer simulations which…
Using a fluid-particle dynamics approach, we numerically study the effects of hydrodynamic interactions on the collective dynamics of active suspensions within a simple model for bacterial motility: each microorganism is modeled as a…
Microorganisms can preferentially orient and move along gradients of a chemo-attractant (i.e., chemotax) while colonies of many microorganisms can collectively undergo complex dynamics in response to chemo-attractants that they themselves…
It is presently believed that flows of viscoelastic polymer solutions in geometries such as a straight pipe or channel are linearly stable. Here we present experimental evidence that such flows can be nonlinearly unstable and can exhibit a…
We show that the unsteadiness of turbulence has a drastic effect on turbulence parameters and in particle cluster formation. To this end we use direct numerical simulations of particle laden flows with a steady forcing that generates an…
We study a large-scale instability in a sheared nonhelical turbulence that causes generation of large-scale vorticity. Three types of the background large-scale flows are considered, i.e., the Couette and Poiseuille flows in a small-scale…