Related papers: Rheotaxis of Active Droplets
Flagellated bacteria are hydrodynamically attracted to rigid walls, yet past work shows a 'hovering' state where they swim stably at a finite height above surfaces. We use numerics and theory to reveal the physical origin of hovering.…
An interacting pair of chemotactic (anti-chemotactic) active colloids, that can rotate their axes of self-propulsion to align {parallel (anti-parallel)} to a chemical gradient, shows dynamical behaviour that varies from bound states to…
A liquid drop impacting a dry solid surface with sufficient kinetic energy will splash, breaking apart into numerous secondary droplets. This phenomenon shows many similarities to forced wetting, including the entrainment of air at the…
Colloidal dispersions are commonly encountered in everyday life and represent an important class of complex fluid. Of particular significance for many commercial products and industrial processes is the ability to control and manipulate the…
Biological microswimmers often encounter deformable boundaries in physiological conditions; for instance, the viscoelastic walls of reproductive tract during migration of spermatozoa, or host tissue during early bacterial biofilm formation.…
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…
The rheology of pressure-driven flows of two-dimensional dense monodisperse emulsions in neutral wetting microchannels is investigated by means of mesoscopic lattice simulations, capable of handling large collections of droplets, in the…
Hydrodynamic signatures at the Stokes regime, pertinent to motility of micro-swimmers, have a long-range nature. This implies that movements of an object in such a viscosity-dominated regime, can be felt tens of body-lengths away and…
In this paper, the self-propelled motion of Leidenfrost droplets on ratchet surfaces is numerically investigated with a thermal multiphase lattice Boltzmann model with liquid-vapor phase change. The capability of the model for simulating…
We numerically study the effect of an active turbulent environment on a passive deformable droplet. The system is simulated using coupled hydrodynamic and nematodynamic equations for nematic liquid crystals with an active stress which is…
The process of drop formation from a nozzle can be seen in many natural systems and engineering applications. Here, we investigate the formation of a liquid droplet from a wettable nozzle. The behavior of a drop is complicated due to an…
Conventionally, a microscopic particle that performs a reciprocal stroke cannot move through its environment. This is because at small scales, the response of simple Newtonian fluids is purely viscous and flows are time-reversible. We show…
Driven or active suspensions can display fascinating collective behavior, where coherent motions or structures arise on a scale much larger than that of the constituent particles. Here, we report experiments and numerical simulations…
Fluidic transport in inverted T-shaped cavities with the flow entering through the top and exiting from the two bottom outlets experiences an interesting phenomenon that causes particles having density lower than that of the fluid medium to…
A range of technologies require the directed motion of nanoscale droplets on solid substrates. A way of realizing this effect is durotaxis, whereby a stiffness gradient of a substrate can induce directional motion without requiring an…
Chemotaxis and auto-chemotaxis play an important role in many essential biological processes. We present a self-propelling artificial swimmer system which exhibits chemotaxis as well as negative auto-chemotaxis. Oil droplets in an aqueous…
Anisotropically wetting substrates enable useful control of droplet behavior across a range of applications. Usually, these involve chemically or physically patterning the substrate surface, or applying gradients in properties like…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…
Actuating periodically an elastic filament in a viscous liquid generally breaks the constraints of Purcell's scallop theorem, resulting in the generation of a net propulsive force. This observation suggests a method to design simple…
Here we study theoretically the dynamics of a 2D and a 3D isotropic droplet in a nematic liquid crystal under a shear flow. We find a large repertoire of possible nonequilibrium steady states as a function of the shear rate and of the…