Related papers: Propulsion driven by self-oscillation via an elect…
Most passive droplet transport strategies rely on spatial variations of material properties to drive droplet motion, leading to gradient-based mechanisms with intrinsic length scales that limit the droplet velocity or the transport…
The design of artificial microswimmers is often inspired by the strategies of natural microorganisms. Many of these creatures exploit the fact that elasticity breaks the time-reversal symmetry of motion at low Reynolds numbers, but this…
Self-assembly is the autonomous organization of components into patterns or structures: an essential ingredient of biology and a desired route to complex organization. At equilibrium, the structure is encoded through specific interactions,…
In the cellular phenomena of cytoplasmic streaming, molecular motors carrying cargo along a network of microtubules entrain the surrounding fluid. The piconewton forces produced by individual motors are sufficient to deform long…
Worm-like filaments that are propelled homogeneously along their tangent vector are studied by Brownian dynamics simulations. Systems in two dimensions are investigated, corresponding to filaments adsorbed to interfaces or surfaces. A large…
Inspired by bouncing drop experiments that revealed how macroscopic systems can exhibit wave-particle properties previously thought to be exclusive to quantum systems, we introduce here a new wave-particle system based on internal gravity…
The Drosophila larva, a soft-body animal, can bend its body and roll efficiently to escape danger. However, contrary to common belief, this rolling motion is not driven by the imbalance of gravity and ground reaction forces. Through…
A simple way to generate propulsion at low Reynolds number is to periodically oscillate a passive flexible filament. Here we present a macroscopic experimental investigation of such a propulsive mechanism. A robotic swimmer is constructed…
When a solid body floats at the interface of a vibrating liquid bath, the relative motion between the object and interface generates outwardly propagating surface waves. It has recently been demonstrated that millimetric objects with…
Recent experiments have exploited elastic instabilities in membranes to create complex patterns. However, the rational design of such structures poses many challenges, as they are products of nonlinear elastic behavior. We pose a simple…
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…
Generation of mechanical oscillation is ubiquitous to wide variety of intracellular processes. We show that catchbonding behaviour of motor proteins provides a generic mechanism of generating spontaneous oscillations in motor-cytoskeletal…
Bacteria can exploit mechanics to display remarkable plasticity in response to locally changing physical and chemical conditions. Compliant structures play a striking role in their taxis behavior, specifically for navigation inside complex…
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…
Self-oscillatory and self-rotatory process driven by non-conservative forces have usually been treated as applications of the concepts of Hopf bifurcation and limit cycle in the theory of differential equations, or as instability problems…
Many organisms leverage an interplay between shape and activity to generate motion and adapt to their environment. Embedding such feedback into synthetic microrobots could eliminate the need for sensors, software, and actuators, yet current…
We present and analyze a theoretical model for the dynamics and interactions of "capillary surfers," which are millimetric objects that self-propel while floating at the interface of a vibrating fluid bath. In our companion paper [1], we…
We investigate the wrinkling dynamics of an elastic filament immersed in a viscous fluid submitted to compression at a finite rate with experiments and by combining geometric nonlinearities, elasticity, and slender body theory. The drag…
Limbless crawling is ubiquitous in biology, from cells to organisms. We develop and analyze a model for the dynamics of one-dimensional elastic crawlers, subject to active stress and deformation-dependent friction with the substrate. We…
Accompanied by the development of microfabrication techniques, such as MEMS and micro-TAS, there has been increasing interests on the methodology to generate a desired motion on a micro object in a solution environment. It is well know that…