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Both natural and artificial small-scale swimmers may often self-propel in environments subject to complex geometrical constraints. While most past theoretical work on low-Reynolds number locomotion addressed idealised geometrical…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2017-11-16 Alexander Chamolly , Takuji Ishikawa , Eric Lauga

Thin liquid films with floating active protein machines are considered. Cyclic mechanical motions within the machines, representing microscopic swimmers, lead to molecular propulsion forces applied to the air-liquid interface. We show that,…

Pattern Formation and Solitons · Physics 2015-05-13 Sergio Alonso , Alexander S. Mikhailov

Trajectories and conformations of uni- and multiflagellar bacteria are studied with a coarse-grained model of a cell comprised of elastic flagella connected to a cell body. The elasticities of both the hook protein (connecting cell body and…

Biological Physics · Physics 2018-11-07 Frank T. M. Nguyen , Michael D. Graham

Certain flow structures trap active microorganisms over extended periods, impacting mortality and growth by inhibiting foraging, exploration, and predator evasion. We show that transport barriers and trapping of a microswimmer in unsteady…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2025-09-23 L. Storm , J. Qiu , K. Gustavsson , B. Mehlig

We study the structure and dynamics of the interface separating a passive fluid from a microtubule-based active fluid. Turbulent-like active flows power giant interfacial fluctuations, which exhibit pronounced asymmetry between regions of…

Membranes regulate transport in a wide variety of industrial and biological applications. The microscale geometry of the membrane can significantly affect overall transport through the membrane, but the precise nature of this multiscale…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-02-02 Molly Brennan , Edwina F. Yeo , Philip Pearce , Mohit P. Dalwadi

Liquid-liquid phase separation is important across biology, physics, and materials science. Although usually studied at equilibrium, active components - such as motor proteins, enzymes, and synthetic microswimmers - are increasingly…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-01-06 Kan Chang , Yulin Li , Ming Yuan , Masaki Sano , Zhihong You , H. P. Zhang

Many lipid membrane-mediated transport processes--such as mechanically-gated channel activation and solute transport--involve structural and dynamical features on membrane thickness length scales. Most existing membrane models, however,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-08-29 Zachary G. Lipel , Yannick A. D. Omar , Dimitrios Fraggedakis

The trajectories of microswimmers moving in narrow channels of widths comparable to their sizes are significantly altered when they encounter another microswimmer moving in the opposite direction. The consequence of these encounters is a…

Artificial microswimmers are a new technology with promising microfluidics and biomedical applications, such as directed cargo transport, microscale assembly, and targeted drug delivery. A fundamental barrier to realising this potential is…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2018-06-27 Thomas D. Montenegro-Johnson

Biological membranes are essential for the cell life and hydration water provides the driving force for their assembly and stability. Here we study the structural properties of water in a phospholipid membrane. We characterize local…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2017-03-24 Fausto Martelli , Hsin-Yu Ko , Carles Calero Borallo , Giancarlo Franzese

To comprehend the complexities of the ice-water interface, we perform a study that attempts to correlate the altered dynamics of water to its perturbed structure at, and due to, the interface. The deviation from bulk values of structural…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-08-02 Saumyak Mukherjee , Sayantan Mondal , Biman Bagchi

We show that activity and broken fore-aft shape symmetry enable microswimmers to cross streamlines in nonuniform shear, a key yet overlooked factor in active cross-stream migration. Using a model of flagellated microswimmers in microchannel…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-04-24 Derek C. Gomes , Tapan C. Adhyapak

We study the local controllability properties of 2D and 3D bio-mimetic swimmers employing the change of their geometric shape to propel themselves in an incompressible fluid described by Navier-Stokes equations. It is assumed that swimmers'…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2016-05-09 Piermarco Cannarsa , Alexandre Khapalov

We use molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the tracer diffusion in a sea of polymers with specific binding zones for the tracer. These binding zones act as traps. Our simulations show that the tracer can undergo normal yet…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-09-22 Nairhita Samanta , Rajarshi Chakrabarti

Catalytic microswimmers convert the chemical energy of a fuel into motion, sustaining spatial chemical gradients and fluid flows that drive their propulsion. This leads to unconventional individual behavior and the emergence of collective…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-09-04 Celso Carrasco , Quentin Martinet , Zaiyi Shen , Juho S. Lintuvuori , Jérémie Palacci , Antoine Aubret

We examine the motion of rigid, ellipsoidal swimmers subjected to a steady vortex flow in two dimensions. Numerical simulations of swimmers in a spatially periodic array of vortices reveal a range of possible behaviors, including trapping…

Chaotic Dynamics · Physics 2020-08-11 S. A. Berman , K. A. Mitchell

The intricate wobbling motion of flagellated bacteria, characterized by the periodic precession of the cell body, is a determinant factor in their motility and navigation within complex fluid environments. While well-studied in quiescent…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-01-26 Wei Feng , Fanglong Dang , Hao Luo , Alan C. H. Tsang , Yanan Liu , Guangyin Jing

We analyse the motion of a flagellated bacterium in a two-fluid medium using slender body theory. The two-fluid model is useful for describing a body moving through a complex fluid with a microstructure whose length scale is comparable to…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2024-12-11 Sabarish V. Narayanan , Donald L. Koch , Sarah Hormozi

The influence of a fluid-fluid interface on self-phoresis of chemically active, axially symmetric, spherical colloids is analyzed. Distinct from the studies of self-phoresis for colloids trapped at fluid interfaces or in the vicinity of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2018-01-22 P. Malgaretti , M. N. Popescu , S. Dietrich