Related papers: Burrowing dynamics of aquatic worms in soft sedime…
While the collective motion of active particles has been studied extensively, effective strategies to navigate particle swarms without external guidance remain elusive. We introduce a method to control the trajectories of two-dimensional…
Many microswimmers are able to swim through viscous fluids by employing periodic non-reciprocal deformations of their appendages. Here we use a simple microswimmer model inspired by swimming biflagellates which consists of a spherical cell…
In many situations bacteria move in complex environments, as for example in soils, oceans or the human gut-track microbiome. In these natural environments, carrier fluids such as mucus or reproductive fluids show complex structure…
Bacterial swimming is well characterized in uniform liquids at rest. The natural habitat of bacterial swimmers, however, is often dominated by moving fluids and interfaces, resulting in shear flows that may strongly alter bacterial…
Microorganisms ofter move in confined, disordered environments, where hydrodynamic couplings can modify their transport behavior. Using extensive finite-element simulations, we investigate the dynamics of microswimmers -- modeled as…
Numerous animals live in, and locomote through, subsea soils. To move in a medium dominated by frictional interactions, many of these animals have adopted unique burrowing strategies. This paper presents a burrowing model inspired by the…
We present a detailed comparison of the rheological behaviour of sheared sediment beds in a pressure-driven, straight channel configuration based on data that was generated by means of fully coupled, grain-resolved direct numerical…
In the fluid dynamics video, we present a microfluidic device to measure the propulsive power of nematodes. The device consists of a tapered conduit filled with aqueous solution. The conduit is subjected to a DC electric field with the…
The ocean is teeming with a myriad of mm-sized invertebrate planktonic larvae, which thrive in a viscous fluid environment. Many of them rely on ciliary beating to generate fluid flows for locomotion and feeding. Their larval forms, local…
This paper presents a soft earthworm robot that is capable of both efficient locomotion and obstacle avoidance. The robot is designed to replicate the unique locomotion mechanisms of earthworms, which enable them to move through narrow and…
Worm-inspired robots provide an effective locomotion strategy for constrained environments by combining cyclic body deformation with alternating anchoring. For compliant robots, however, the interaction between deformable anchoring…
We present a mathematical model of lophotrichous bacteria, motivated by Pseudomonas putida, which swim through fluid by rotating a cluster of multiple flagella extended from near one pole of the cell body. Although the flagella rotate…
Peritrichous bacteria synchronize and bundle their flagella to actively swim while disruption of the bundle leads to tumbling. It is still not known whether the number of flagella represents an evolutionary adaptation towards optimizing…
Since its discovery, the deep-sea glass sponge Euplectella aspergillum has attracted interest in its mechanical properties and beauty. Its skeletal system is composed of amorphous hydrated silica and is arranged in a highly regular and…
We investigate the sedimentation dynamics of a binary mixture, the species of which differ by their Stokes coefficients but are identical otherwise. We analyze the sedimentation dynamics and the morphology of the final deposits using…
How systems are endowed with migration capacity is a fascinating question with implications ranging from the design of novel active systems to the control of microbial populations. Bacteria, which can be found in a variety of environments,…
Walking is a common bipedal and quadrupedal gait and is often associated with terrestrial and aquatic organisms. Inspired by recent evidence of the neural underpinnings of primitive aquatic walking in the little skate Leucoraja erinacea, we…
We investigate the fluid dynamics of brine shrimp larvae swimming in this gallery of fluid motion video. Time resolved particle image velocimetry was performed using nano-particles as seeding material to measure the time dependent velocity…
Many parts of biological organisms are comprised of deformable porous media. The biological media is both pliable enough to deform in response to an outside force and can deform by itself using the work of an embedded muscle. For example,…
Although typically possessing four limbs and short bodies, lizards have evolved a diversity of body plans, from short-bodied and fully-limbed to elongate and nearly limbless. Such diversity in body morphology is hypothesized as adaptations…