Related papers: Autonomous elastic microswimmer
We theoretically investigate self-oscillating waves of an active material, which have recently been introduced as a non-symmetric part of the elastic moduli, termed odd elasticity. Using Purcell's three-link swimmer model, we reveal that an…
Mechanical characteristics of single biological cells are used to identify and possibly leverage interesting differences among cells or cell populations. Fluidity---hysteresivity normalized to the extremes of an elastic solid or a viscous…
We introduce a phenomenological theory for a new class of soft active fluids, with the ability to synchronise. Our theoretical framework describes the macroscopic behaviour of a collection of interacting anisotropic elements with cyclic…
Microorganisms are rarely found in Nature swimming freely in an unbounded fluid. Instead, they typically encounter other organisms, hard walls, or deformable boundaries such as free interfaces or membranes. Hydrodynamic interactions between…
Weakly coupled oscillators adjust their dynamics to work in unison: they synchronize. This ubiquitous phenomenon is observed for oscillating pendulum, electronic devices, as well as clapping crowds or flashing fireflies. In effect,…
The current work studies the dynamics of a microswimmer in pressure-driven flow of a weakly viscoelastic fluid. Employing the second-order fluid model, we show that the self-propelling swimmer experiences a viscoelastic swimming lift in…
Microswimmers in suspension exhibit collective swimming behaviour, forming various self-organised structures including ordered, aggregated, and turbulent-like structures. When mixed with passive particles phase-separation is known to occur,…
The majority of studies on self-propelled particles and microswimmers concentrates on objects that do not feature a deterministic bending of their trajectory. However, perfect axial symmetry is hardly found in reality, and shape-asymmetric…
In this paper we study swimming of a model organism, the so-called Taylor's swimming sheet, in a viscoelastic fluid close to a solid boundary. This situation comprises natural habitats of many swimming microorganisms, and while previous…
Swimming microorganisms often self propel in fluids with complex rheology. While past theoretical work indicates that fluid viscoelasticity should hinder their locomotion, recent experiments on waving swimmers suggest a possible…
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…
We present in this fluid dynamics video a novel experimental setup with self-propelled swimmers on a free surface. The swimmers, modeled as flexible thin filaments, are subjected to external electromagnetic forcing driving a propagating…
By synergistically combining modeling, simulation and experiments, we show that there exists a regime of self-propulsion in which the inertia in the fluid dynamics can be separated from that of the swimmer. This is demonstrated by the…
Suspensions of swimming micro-organisms are known to undergo intricate collective dynamics as a result of hydrodynamic and collision interactions. Micro-swimmers, such as bacteria and micro-algae, naturally live and have evolved in complex…
Active matter has been the object of huge amount of research in recent years for its important fundamental and applicative properties. In this paper we investigate active suspensions of micro-swimmers through direct numerical simulation, so…
We theoretically and computationally study the low-Reynolds-number hydrodynamics of a linear active microswimmer surfing on a compressible thin fluid layer characterized by an odd viscosity. Since the underlying three-dimensional fluid is…
A conformation space kinetic model is constructed to drive the deformation cycle of a three-sphere swimmer to achieve propulsion at low Reynolds number. We analyze the effect of an external load on the performance of this kinetic swimmer,…
We propose a combined analytical-numerical strategy to predict the dynamics and trajectory of a microswimmer next to a curved spherical obstacle. The microswimmer is actuated by a slip velocity on its surface and a uniformly valid solution…
The three-sphere swimmer by Najafi and Golestanian is composed of three spheres connected by two arms. The case in which the swimmer can control the lengths of the two arms has been studied in detail. Here we study a variation of the model…
Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move though complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules, or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial…