Related papers: Metachronal coordination at the mesoscale
It has long been known that some microswimmers seem to swim counter-intuitively faster when the viscosity of the surrounding fluid is increased, whereas others slow down. This conflicting dependence of the swimming velocity on the viscosity…
We define a model microswimmer with a variable cycle time, thus allowing the possibility of phase locking driven by hydrodynamic interactions between swimmers. We find that, for extensile or contractile swimmers, phase locking does occur,…
We examine the hydrodynamic performance of two cilia beating patterns reconstructed from experimental data. In their respective natural systems, the two beating patterns correspond to: (A) pumping-specialized cilia, and (B)…
Microswimming cells and robots exhibit diverse behaviours due to both their swimming and their environment. One of the core environmental features impacting inertialess swimming is background flows. While the influence of select flows,…
Metamaterials are structures composed of repeating unit-cells which enable macro-scale properties not found in nature. Since metamaterials are typically solid structures with predetermined interconnections, it is challenging to leverage…
On surfaces with many motile cilia, beats of the individual cilia coordinate to form metachronal waves. We present a theoretical framework that connects the dynamics of an individual cilium to the collective dynamics of a ciliary carpet via…
The time dynamics of flagellar and ciliary beating is often neglected in theories of microswimmers, with the most common models prescribing a time-constant actuation of the surrounding fluid. By explicitly introducing a metachronal wave,…
Self-propelled colloids (swimmers) in confining geometries follow trajectories determined by hydrodynamic interactions with the bounding surfaces. However, typically these interactions are ignored or truncated to lowest order. We…
We investigate synchronization caused by long-range hydrodynamic interaction in a two-dimensional, substrated array of rotors with random intrinsic frequencies. The rotor mimics a flagellated bacterium that is attached to the substrate…
We introduce a measure for energetic efficiency of biological cilia acting individually or collectively and numerically determine the optimal beating patterns according to this criterion. Maximizing the efficiency of a single cilium leads…
We study synchronization in bulk suspensions of spherical microswimmers with chiral trajectories using large scale numerics. The model is generic. It corresponds to the lowest order solution of a general model for self-propulsion at low…
Metamaterials are artificial composite structures designed for controlling waves or fields, and exhibit interaction phenomena that are unexpected on the basis of their chemical constituents. These phenomena are encoded in effective material…
Motile cilia beat in an asymmetric fashion in order to propel the surrounding fluid. When many cilia are located on a surface, their beating can synchronise such that their phases form metachronal waves. Here, we computationally study a…
Studies of model microswimmers have significantly contributed to the understanding of the principles of self-propulsion we have today. However, only a small number of microswimmer types have been amenable to analytic modeling, and further…
Synchronization induced by long-range hydrodynamic interactions is attracting attention as a candidate mechanism behind coordinated beating of cilia and flagella. Here we consider a minimal model of hydrodynamic synchronization in the low…
We suggest several reciprocal swimming mechanisms that lead to a locomotion only in viscoelastic fluids. The first situation is to have a difference between the two amplitudes of the oscillatory arm motion for a three-sphere microswimmer.…
Hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic numerical studies of a mechanically forced two-vortex flow inside a sphere are reported. The simulations are performed in the intermediate regime between the laminar flow and developed turbulence where a…
Many active biological particles, such as swimming microorganisms or motor-proteins, do work on their environment by going though a periodic sequence of shapes. Interactions between particles can lead to the phase-synchronization of their…
This study introduces a novel method to break wave transmission reciprocity by leveraging the synchronization of self-oscillators. An experimental demonstration with aeroacoustic cavities is presented. They behave as weakly nonlinear limit…
A variety of swimming microorganisms, called ciliates, exploit the bending of a large number of small and densely-packed organelles, termed cilia, in order to propel themselves in a viscous fluid. We consider a spherical envelope model for…