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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…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2017-11-16 Alexander Chamolly , Takuji Ishikawa , Eric Lauga

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

We study the stochastic force dynamics of a model microswimmer (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii), using a combined experimental, theoretical, and numerical approach. While swimming dynamics have been extensively studied using hydrodynamic…

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 theoretically describe the dynamics of swimmer populations confined in thin liquid films. We first demonstrate that hydrodynamic interactions between confined swimmers only depend on their shape and are independent of their specific…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2015-06-11 Tommaso Brotto , Jean-Baptiste Caussin , Eric Lauga , Denis Bartolo

Many microorganisms and artificial microswimmers use helical appendages in order to generate locomotion. Though often rotated so as to produce thrust, some species of bacteria such Spiroplasma, Rhodobacter sphaeroides and Spirochetes induce…

Biological Physics · Physics 2018-10-23 Lyndon Koens , Hang Zhang , Martin Moeller , Ahmed Mourran , Eric Lauga

We develop a minimal hydrodynamic model, without an orientational order parameter, for assemblies of contractile swimmers encapsulated in a droplet of a binary-fluid emulsion. Our model uses two coupled scalar order parameters, $\phi$ and…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-09-13 Nadia Bihari Padhan , Rahul Pandit

Hydrodynamical interactions of active micro-particles are pervasive in our planet's fluid environments. Hence, understanding the interactions of these self-propelled particles is essential for science and engineering. In this paper the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-12-28 Yonatan Ashenafi

In this paper we systematically derive a fourth-order continuum theory capable of reproducing mesoscale turbulence in a three-dimensional suspension of microswimmers. We start from overdamped Langevin equations for a generic microscopic…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2018-06-28 Henning Reinken , Sabine H. L. Klapp , Markus Bär , Sebastian Heidenreich

Oscillations of flagella and cilia play an important role in biology, which motivates the idea of functional mimicry as part of bio-inspired applications. Nevertheless, it still remains challenging to drive their artificial counterparts to…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-06-10 Lailai Zhu , Howard A. Stone

Many eukaryotic microorganisms propelled by multiple flagella can swim very rapidly with distinct gaits. Here, we model a three-dimensional mutiflagellate swimming strategy, resembling the microalgae, and investigate the effects of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2023-10-17 Shiyuan Hu , Fanlong Meng

Fish-inspired aquatic robots are gaining increasing attention in marine robot communities due to their high swimming speeds and efficient propulsion enabled by flexible bodies that generate undulatory motions. To support the design…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-11-07 Zhiheng Chen , Wei Wang

Hot microswimmers are self-propelled Brownian particles that exploit local heating for their directed self-thermophoretic motion. We provide a pedagogical overview of the key physical mechanisms underlying this promising new technology. It…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2018-05-23 Klaus Kroy , Dipanjan Chakraborty , Frank Cichos

Few simulations exist for microswimmers near deformable interfaces. Here, we present numerical simulations of the hydrodynamic flows associated with a single microswimmer embedded in a binary fluid mixture. The two fluids demix, separated…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-05-24 Chao Feng , John J. Molina , Matthew S. Turner , Ryoichi Yamamoto

We study two microswimmers consisting of a spherical rigid head and a passive elastic tail. In the first one the tail is clamped to the head, and the system oscillates under the action of an external torque. In the second one, head and tail…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2017-02-02 Giancarlo Cicconofri , Antonio DeSimone

A growing body of work aims at designing and testing micron-scale synthetic swimmers. One method, inspired by the locomotion of flagellated bacteria, consists of applying a rotating magnetic field to a rigid, helically-shaped, propeller…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2014-02-17 Yi Man , Eric Lauga

In this review we discuss the recent progress in the simulation of soft active matter systems and in particular the hydrodynamics of microswimmers using the method of multiparticle collision dynamics, which solves the hydrodynamic flows…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-09-03 Andreas Zöttl

A model of an autonomous three-sphere microswimmer is proposed by implementing a coupling effect between the two natural lengths of an elastic microswimmer. Such a coupling mechanism is motivated by the previous models for synchronization…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-05-26 Katsutomo Era , Yuki Koyano , Yuto Hosaka , Kento Yasuda , Hiroyuki Kitahata , Shigeyuki Komura

Active diffusiophoresis - swimming through interaction with a self-generated, neutral, solute gradient - is a paradigm for autonomous motion at the micrometer scale. We study this propulsion mechanism within a linear response theory.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-05-30 Benedikt Sabass , Udo Seifert

Suspensions of self-propelled particles, such as swimming micro-organisms, are known to undergo complex dynamics as a result of hydrodynamic interactions. This fluid dynamics video presents a numerical simulation of such a suspension, based…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2009-10-20 David Saintillan , Amir Alizadeh Pahlavan