Related papers: Inertial self-propulsion of spherical microswimmer…
Marine plankton are usually modeled as settling elongated micro-swimmers. For the first time, we consider the torque induced by fluid inertia on such swimmers, and we discover that they spontaneously swim in the direction opposite to…
The swimming of a sphere immersed in a viscous incompressible fluid with inertia is studied for surface modulations of small amplitude on the basis of the Navier-Stokes equations. The mean swimming velocity and the mean rate of dissipation…
Swimming of a sphere in a viscous incompressible fluid is studied on the basis of the Navier-Stokes equations for wave-type distortions of the spherical shape. At sizable values of the dimensionless scale number the mean swimming velocity…
Swimming velocity and rate of dissipation of a sphere with surface distortions are discussed on the basis of the Stokes equations of low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. At first the surface distortions are assumed to cause an irrotational…
Translational and rotational swimming at small Reynolds number of a planar assembly of identical spheres immersed in an incompressible viscous fluid is studied on the basis of a set of equations of motion for the individual spheres. The…
In Stokes flow, Purcell's scallop theorem forbids objects with time-reversible (reciprocal) swimming strokes from moving. In the presence of inertia, this restriction is eased and reciprocally deforming bodies can swim. A number of recent…
Many microorganisms swim through gels and non-Newtonian fluids in their natural environments. In this paper, we focus on microorganisms which use flagella for propulsion. We address how swimming velocities are affected in nonlinearly…
We discover an instability mechanism in suspensions of self-propelled particles that does not involve active stress. Instead, it is driven by a subtle interplay of inertia, swimmer motility, and concentration fluctuations, through a crucial…
In a world without inertia, Purcell's scallop theorem states that in a Newtonian fluid a time-reversible motion cannot produce any net force or net flow. Here we consider the extent to which the nonlinear rheological behavior of…
A small spheroid settling in a quiescent fluid experiences an inertial torque that aligns it so that it settles with its broad side first. Here we show that an active particle experiences such a torque too, as it settles in a fluid at rest.…
The transduction of force into motion for microswimmers at intermediate Reynolds numbers ($Re \sim 1$), where inertia becomes relevant, is a fundamental problem in active matter. Using the multicellular alga \textit{Volvox} as a model…
Many microorganisms swim in a highly heterogeneous environment with obstacles such as fibers or polymers. To better understand how this environment affects microorganism swimming, we study propulsion of a cylinder or filament in a fluid…
Explicit expressions are derived for the matrices determining the mean translational and rotational swimming velocities and the mean rate of dissipation for Stokesian swimming at low Reynolds number of a distorting sphere in a viscous…
We study the translational and rotational dynamics of neutrally-buoyant finite-size spheroids in hydrodynamic turbulence by means of fully resolved numerical simulations. We examine axisymmetric shapes, from oblate to prolate, and the…
The swimming of an elliptical disk at small Reynolds number is studied on the basis of a perturbative solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow near a deformable infinite sheet. A stroke involving an elliptically polarized…
The swimming of a sphere by means of tangential helical waves running along its surface is studied on the basis of the Stokes equations. Two types of tangential waves are found. The first of these is associated with a pressure disturbance…
We analyse the tumbling of small non-spherical, axisymmetric particles in random and turbulent flows. We compute the orientational dynamics in terms of a perturbation expansion in the Kubo number, and obtain the tumbling rate in terms of…
The motion of a large, neutrally buoyant, particle, freely advected by a turbulent flow is determined experimentally. We demonstrate that both the translational and angular accelerations exhibit very wide probability distributions, a…
Microswimmers, and among them aspirant microrobots, generally have to cope with flows where viscous forces are dominant, characterized by a low Reynolds number ($Re$). This implies constraints on the possible sequences of body motion, which…
The swimming of a deformable planar slab in a viscous incompressible fluid is studied on the basis of the Navier-Stokes equations. A continuum of plane wave displacements, symmetric on both sides of the slab and characterized by a…