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The motility of a fish keratocyte on a flat substrate exhibits two distinct regimes: the non-migrating and the migrating one. In both configurations the shape is fixed in time and, when the cell is moving, the velocity is constant in…
Many microorganisms swim in a highly heterogeneous environment with obstacles such as fibers or polymers. To better understand how this environment affects microorganism swimming, we study propulsion of a cylinder or filament in a fluid…
A flexible membrane deforming its shape in time can self-propel in a viscous fluid. Alternatively, if the membrane is anchored, its deformation will lead to fluid transport. Past work in this area focused on situations where the deformation…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
In the framework of a phase field model of a single cell crawling on a substrate, we investigate how the properties of the cell membrane affect the shape and motility of the cell. Since the membrane influences the cell dynamics on multiple…
Hovering insects are limited by their physiology and need to rotate their wings at the end of each back and forth motion to keep the wing's leading edge ahead of its trailing edge. The wing rotation at the end of each half-stroke pushes the…
We determine both the in-plane and out-of-plane dynamics of viscoelastic membranes separating two viscous fluids in order to understand microrheological studies of such membranes. We demonstrate the general viscoelastic signatures in the…
A steady horizontal air stream flows across a book clamped at its downstream end. Pages lift off to form a growing bent stack whose shape is determined by the torques associated with aerodynamic forces, weight and elastic resistance to…
(Abbreviated) We investigate the dynamical mechanisms responsible for producing tidal tails from dwarf satellites using N-body simulations. We identify two important dynamical co-conspirators: 1) the points where the attractive force of the…
Lipid bilayer membranes below their main transition have two tilt order parameters, corresponding to the two monolayers. These two tilts may be strongly coupled to membrane shape but only weakly coupled to each other. We discuss some…
Complex or hostile environments can sometimes inhibit the movement capabilities of diffusive particles or active swimmers, who may thus become stuck in fixed positions. This occurs, for example, in the adhesion of bacteria to surfaces at…
We consider the dynamic snapping instability of elastic beams and shells. Using the Kirchhoff rod and F\"{o}ppl-von K\'{a}rm\'{a}n plate equations, we study the stability, deformation modes, and snap-through dynamics of an elastic arch with…
How long a fluid membrane vesicle stressed with a steady ramp of micropipette last before rupture? Or conversely, how high the surface tension should be to rupture a membrane? To answer these challenging questions we have developed a…
We study, using dissipative particle dynamics simulations, the effect of active lipid flip-flop on model fluid bilayer membranes. We consider both cases of symmetric as well as asymmetric flip-flops. Symmetric flip-flop leads to a steady…
Stick-slip motion, a common phenomenon observed during crawling of cells, is found to be strongly sensitive to the substrate stiffness. Stick-slip behaviours have previously been investigated typically using purely elastic substrates. For a…
The mechanosensitivity of cells, which determines how they are able to respond to mechanical signals received from their environment, is crucial for the functioning of all biological systems. In experiments, cells placed on cyclically…
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,…
We experimentally investigate the splashing mechanism of a millimeter-sized ethanol drop impinging on a structured solid surface, comprised of micro-pillars, through side-view and top-view high speed imaging. By increasing the impact…
Nonequilibrium membrane pattern formation is studied using meshless membrane simulation. We consider that molecules bind to either surface of a bilayer membrane and move to the opposite leaflet by flip--flop. When binding does not modify…
Initially straight slender elastic rods with geometrically constrained ends buckle and form stable two-dimensional shapes when compressed by bringing the ends together. It is also known that beyond a critical value of the pre-stress,…