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Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…
We study the self-propulsion of spherical droplets as simplified hydrodynamic models of swimming microorganisms or artificial microswimmers. In contrast to approaches, which start from active velocity fields produced by the system, we…
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…
We study the local controllability properties of 2D and 3D bio-mimetic swimmers employing the change of their geometric shape to propel themselves in an incompressible fluid described by Navier-Stokes equations. It is assumed that swimmers'…
Autonomous locomotion is a ubiquitous phenomenon in biology and in physics of active systems at microscopic scale. This includes prokaryotic, eukaryotic cells (crawling and swimming) and artificial swimmers. An outstanding feature is the…
This paper studies the influence of orienting external fields on pattern formation, particularly mesoscale turbulence, in microswimmer suspensions. To this end, we apply a hydrodynamic theory that can be derived from a microscopic…
We present an extension of our recently introduced molecular density functional theory of water [G. Jeanmairet et al., J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 4, 619, 2013] to the solvation of hydrophobic solutes of various sizes, going from angstroms to…
Current models of phoretic transport rely on molecular forces creating a "diffuse" particle-fluid interface. We investigate theoretically an alternative mechanism, in which a diffuse interface emerges solely due to a non-vanishing…
This paper discusses modelling, controllability and gait design for a spherical flexible swimmer. We first present a kinematic model of a low Reynolds number spherical flexible swimming mechanism with periodic surface deformations in the…
In the present paper we give a brief summary of some recent theoretical advances in the treatment of inhomogeneous fluids and methods which have applications in the study of dynamical properties of liquids in situations of extreme…
Active media, whose constituents are able to move autonomously, display novel features that differ from those of equilibrium systems. In addition to naturally-occurring active systems such as populations of swimming bacteria, active systems…
We present the results of smoothed particle hydrodynamic simulations investigating the evolution and fragmentation of filaments that are accreting from a turbulent medium. We show that the presence of turbulence, and the resulting…
Micro/nano-scale propulsion has attracted considerable recent attention due to its promise for biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery. In this paper, we report on a new experimental design and theoretical modelling of…
Micro-swimmer locomotion in heterogeneous media is increasingly relevant in biological physics due to the prevalence of microorganisms in complex environments. A model for such porous media is the Brinkman fluid which accounts for a sparse…
Poroelastic materials, consisting of a permeable solid matrix infiltrated with fluid, are ubiquitous in natural and engineering contexts. In poroelastic polymer solids, the elastic matrix swells to equilibrium when immersed in a solvent…
We employ computer simulations to unveil the translational and rotational dynamics of the self-driven chemically symmetric and asymmetric rigid dumbbells in two-dimensional polymer gel. Our results show that activity or the self-propulsion…
We investigate the effect of cooperative interactions in an ensemble of microorganisms, modelled as self-propelled disk-like and rod-like particles, in a three-dimensional turbulent flow to show flocking as an emergent phenomenon. Building…
Metachronal locomotion is a widespread swimming mode used by aquatic swarming organisms to achieve performance and maneuverability in the intermediate Reynolds number regime. Our understanding of the mechanisms driving these abilities is…
Most classical work on the hydrodynamics of low-Reynolds-number swimming addresses deterministic locomotion in quiescent environments. Thermal fluctuations in fluids are known to lead to a Brownian loss of the swimming direction. As most…
Small objects can swim by generating around them fields or gradients which in turn induce fluid motion past their surface by phoretic surface effects. We quantify for arbitrary swimmer shapes and surface patterns, how efficient swimming…