Related papers: Water surface swimming dynamics in lightweight cen…
Fish swim with flexible fins that stand in stark contrast to the rigid propulsors of engineered vehicles. Using numerical simulations of the dynamics of flow-structure interaction, we have found that dorso-ventral deformation in flexible…
In isotropic fluids like water, micrometer-scale swimmers have evolved swim strokes to translate despite their tiny size. As described by Purcell in his Scallop Theorem, reciprocal motions, like those performed by a scallop, cannot drive…
Active colloidal microswimmers serve as archetypical active fluid systems, and as models for biological swimmers. Here, by studying in detail their velocity traces, we find robust power-law intermittency with system-dependent exponential…
Microswimmers (planktonic microorganisms or artificial active particles) immersed in a fluid interact with the ambient flow, altering their trajectories. In surface gravity waves, a common goal for microswimmers is vertical migration (e.g.,…
The motility of microorganisms is influenced greatly by their hydrodynamic interactions with the fluidic environment they inhabit. We show by direct experimental observation of the bi-flagellated alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii that fluid…
The swimming trajectories of self-propelled organisms or synthetic devices in a viscous fluid can be altered by hydrodynamic interactions with nearby boundaries. We explore a multipole description of swimming bodies and provide a general…
Centipede-like robots offer unique locomotion advantages due to their small cross-sectional area for accessing confined spaces, and their redundant legs enhance robustness in cluttered environments such as search-and-rescue and pipe…
Elongate animals and robots use undulatory body waves to locomote through diverse environments. Geometric mechanics provides a framework to model and optimize such systems in highly damped environments, connecting a prescribed shape change…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
In this communication we address some hydrodynamic aspects of recently revisited drift mechanism of biogenic mixing in the ocean (Katija and Dabiri, Nature vol. 460, pp. 624-626, 2009). The relevance of the locomotion gait at various…
Animals achieve robust locomotion by offloading regulation from the brain to physical couplings within the body. In contrast, locomotion in artificial systems often depends on centralized processors. We introduce a rapid and autonomous…
We consider a finite-dimensional model for the motion of microscopic organisms whose propulsion exploits the action of a layer of cilia covering its surface. The model couples Newton's laws driving the organism, considered as a rigid body,…
Swimming micro-organisms such as flagellated bacteria and sperm cells have fascinating locomotion capabilities. Inspired by their natural motion, there is an ongoing effort to develop artificial robotic nano-swimmers for potential in-body…
The survival of many microorganisms, like \textit{Leptospira} or \textit{Spiroplasma} bacteria, can depend on their ability to navigate towards regions of favorable viscosity. While this ability, called viscotaxis, has been observed in…
Active particles, which interact hydrodynamically, display a remarkable variety of emergent collective phenomena. We use squirmers to model spherical microswimmers and explore the collective behavior of thousands of them under the influence…
The motion of a rotating helical body in a viscoelastic fluid is considered. In the case of force-free swimming, the introduction of viscoelasticity can either enhance or retard the swimming speed and locomotive efficiency, depending on the…
Active diffusiophoresis - swimming through interaction with a self-generated, neutral, solute gradient - is a paradigm for autonomous motion at the micrometer scale. We study this propulsion mechanism within a linear response theory.…
We demonstrate with experiments and simulations how microscopic self-propelled particles navigate through environments presenting complex spatial features, which mimic the conditions inside cells, living organisms and future lab-on-a-chip…
We use particle simulations to reveal two distinct propulsion mechanisms for a scallop-like swimmer to locomote itself in granular media by reciprocally flapping its wings. Based on the discrete element method, we examine the kinematics and…
The possibility of microscopic swimming by extraction of energy from an external flow is discussed, focusing on the migration of a simple trimer across a linear shear flow. The geometric properties of swimming, together with the possible…