Related papers: Mechanisms for bacterial gliding motility on soft …
The friction of a stationary moving skate on smooth ice is investigated, in particular in relation to the formation of a thin layer of water between skate and ice. It is found that the combination of ploughing and sliding gives a friction…
Bacteria often traverse confined spaces to perform critical functions in symbiosis, infection, drug delivery, and soil bioremediation. While the canonical run-and-tumble strategy enables exploration, its reliance on constant sensing and…
Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…
The bacterial flagellar motor drives the rotation of flagellar filaments and enables many species of bacteria to swim. Torque is generated by interaction of stator units, anchored to the peptidoglycan cell wall, with the rotor. Recent…
Meandering instability is familiar to everyone through river meandering or small rivulets of rain flowing down a windshield. However, its physical understanding is still premature, although it could inspire researchers in various fields,…
We study the effect of viscoelastic dynamics on the frictional properties of a (mean field) spring-block system pulled on a rough surface by an external drive. When the drive moves at constant velocity V, two dynamical regimes are observed:…
A new kinetic model for the dynamics of myxobacteria colonies on flat surfaces is derived formally, and first analytical and numerical results are presented. The model is based on the assumption of hard binary collisions of two different…
We investigate a model for the dynamics of a solid object, which moves over a randomly vibrating solid surface and is subject to a constant external force. The dry friction between the two solids is modeled phenomenologically as being…
The ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments is fundamental to a range of cellular behaviours, with substrate stiffness increasingly being found to be a key signalling factor. Although active…
Contacts between particles in dense, sheared suspensions are believed to underpin much of their rheology. Roughness and adhesion are known to constrain the relative motion of particles, and thus globally affect the shear response, but an…
Bacterial processes ranging from gene expression to motility and biofilm formation are constantly challenged by internal and external noise. While the importance of stochastic fluctuations has been appreciated for chemotaxis, it is…
Active propulsion, as performed by bacteria and Janus particles, in combination with hydrodynamic interaction results in the accumulation of bacteria at a flat wall. However, in microfluidic devices with cylindrical pillars of sufficiently…
Rubber friction is of major practical importance in applications such as tires, rubber seals, and footwear. This review article focuses on the theory and experimental studies of rubber friction on substrates with random roughness. We…
Motivated by the dynamics of microbubbles near catalytic surfaces in bubble-powered microrockets, we consider theoretically the growth of a free spherical bubble near a flat no-slip surface in a Stokes flow. The flow at the bubble surface…
When a liquid drop falls on a solid substrate, the air layer in between them delays the occurrence of liquid--solid contact. For impacts on smooth substrates, the air film can even prevent wetting, allowing the drop to bounce off with…
Cell walls define a cell shape in bacteria. They are rigid to resist large internal pressures, but remarkably plastic to adapt to a wide range of external forces and geometric constraints. Currently, it is unknown how bacteria maintain…
Formation of bacterial colonies as biofilm on the surface/interface of various objects has the potential to impact not only human health and disease but also energy and environmental considerations. Biofilms can be regarded as soft…
In the present work we simulate the basic two-dimensional dynamics of swarming E. coli bacteria on the surface of a moderately soft agar plate. Individual bacteria are modelled by self-propelled ridged bodies (agents), which interact with…
The swimming properties of an E. coli-type model bacterium are investigated by mesoscale hy- drodynamic simulations, combining molecular dynamics simulations of the bacterium with the multiparticle particle collision dynamics method for the…
A thin-walled tube, e.g., a drinking straw, manifests an instability when bent by localizing the curvature change in a small region. This instability has been extensively studied since the seminal work of Brazier nearly a century ago.…