Related papers: Rheotaxis of Active Droplets
A liquid droplet is placed on a rotating helical fiber. We find that the droplet may slide down, attach or climb up the fiber. We inspect experimentally the domain of existence of these three behaviors as a function of the geometrical…
We study the interplay of activity, order and flow through a set of coarse-grained equations governing the hydrodynamic velocity, concentration and stress fields in a suspension of active, energy-dissipating particles. We make several…
The swimming of cells, far from any boundary, can arise in the absence of long-range liquid-crystalline order within the cytoplasm, but simple models of this effect are lacking. Here we present a two-dimensional model of droplet…
We review recent work on active colloids or swimmers, such as self-propelled microorganisms, phoretic colloidal particles, and artificial micro-robotic systems, moving in fluid-like environments. These environments can be water-like and…
We numerically study the dynamics of a passive fluid droplet confined within a microchannel whose walls are covered with a thin layer of active gel. The latter represents a fluid of extensile material modelling, for example, a suspension of…
Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…
Biological tissues have been observed to display emergent fluid-like properties, owing to physical interactions between cells. However, it remains unclear in general how these fluid-like properties affect tissue structure and function.…
We study the dynamics of an active gel droplet with imposed orientational anchoring (normal or planar) at its surface. We find that if the activity is large enough droplets subject to strong anchoring spontaneously start to rotate, with the…
Numerous cell-types have shown a remarkable ability to detect and move along gradients in stiffness of an underlying substrate -- a process known as durotaxis. The mechanisms underlying durotaxis are still unresolved, but generally believed…
From the mitotic spindle up to tissues and biofilms, many biological systems behave as active droplets, which often break symmetry and change shape spontaneously. Here, I show that active nematic droplets can experience a fingering…
This chapter on the rheology of active fluids is an attempt to correlate theoretical and experimental work. A considerable amount of theoretical work and most of the experimental data focus on the rheology of active fluids in a Newtonian…
The self-sustained motion of fluids on gradient substrates is a spectacular phenomenon, which can be employed and controlled in applications by carefully engineering the substrate properties. Here, we report on a design of a gel substrate…
Microscopic active droplets are able to swim autonomously in viscous flows: this puzzling feature stems from solute exchanges with the surrounding fluid via surface reactions or their spontaneous solubilisation, and the interfacial flows…
Ciliated microswimmers and flagellated bacteria alter their swimming trajectories to follow the direction of an applied electric field exhibiting electrotaxis. Both for matters of application and physical modelling, it is instructive to…
In active nematic liquid crystals activity is able to drive chaotic spatiotemporal flows referred to as active turbulence. Active turbulence has been characterized through theoretical and experimental work as a low Reynolds number…
Drops of active liquid crystal have recently shown the ability to self-propel, which was associated with topological defects in the orientation of active filaments [Sanchez {\em et al.}, Nature {\bf 491}, 431 (2013)]. Here, we study the…
Internal recirculation in a moving droplet plays an important role in several droplet-based microfluidic devices as it enhances mixing, chemical reaction and heat transfer. The occurrence of fluid slip at the wall, which becomes prominent…
We investigate the mechanics of an active droplet endowed with internal nematic order and surrounded by an isotropic Newtonian fluid. Using numerical simulations we demonstrate that, due to the interplay between the active stresses and the…
The spontaneous emergence of collective flows is a generic property of active fluids and often leads to chaotic flow patterns characterised by swirls, jets, and topological disclinations in their orientation field. However, the ability to…
The dynamics and rheology of suspensions of fluid vesicles or red blood cells is investigated by a combination of molecular dynamics and mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations in two dimensions. The vesicle suspension is confined between two…