Related papers: Durotaxis in viscoelastic fluids
The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…
Most classical work on the hydrodynamics of low-Reynolds-number swimming addresses deterministic locomotion in quiescent environments. Thermal fluctuations in fluids are known to lead to a Brownian loss of the swimming direction. As most…
Discrete simulation methods are efficient tools to investigate the complex behaviors of complex fluids made of either dry granular materials or dilute suspensions. By contrast, materials made of soft and/or concentrated units (emulsions,…
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…
Many microorganisms live and evolve in complex fluids. Examples include mammalian spermatozoa in cervical mucus, worms (e.g., \textit{C. elegans}) in wet soil, and bacteria (e.g., \textit{H. pylori}) in our stomach lining. Due to the…
Motivated by the motion of biopolymers and membranes in solution, this article presents a formulation of the equations of motion for curves and surfaces in a viscous fluid. We focus on geometrical aspects and simple variational methods for…
The biological fluids encountered by self-propelled cells display complex microstructures and rheology. We consider here the general problem of low-Reynolds number locomotion in a complex fluid. {Building on classical work on the transport…
Many fascinating properties of biological active matter crucially depend on the capacity of constituting entities to perform directed motion, e.g., molecular motors transporting vesicles inside cells or bacteria searching for food. While…
Studies of particle motion in vortical flows have mainly focused on point-like particles, either inertial or self-propelled. This approximation assumes that the velocity field that surrounds the particle is linear. We consider an…
Viscoelastic fluids impact the locomotion of swimming microorganisms and can be harnessed to devise new types of self-propelling devices. Here we report on experiments demonstrating the use of normal stress differences for propulsion. Rigid…
The propagation characteristics of fluid vortices, particularly monopoles and dipoles, in a homogeneous viscoelastic fluid were reported in a recent publication [ Phys. Plasmas 23, 013707 (2016)]. In that study, a dusty plasma was modeled…
Biological microswimmers such as bacteria and sperm cells often encounter complex biological fluid environments. Here we use the well-known squirmer microswimmer model to show the importance of the local fluid microstructure and…
Many types of motile cells perform durotaxis, namely, directed migration following gradients of substrate stiffness. Recent experiments have revealed that cell monolayers can migrate toward stiffer regions even when individual cells do not…
A vibrational model of transport properties of dense fluids assumes that solid-like oscillations of atoms around their temporary equilibrium positions dominate the dynamical picture. The temporary equilibrium positions of atoms do not form…
Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move though complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules, or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial…
We consider an active, stochastic microscopic model of particles suspended in a fluid and show that the coarse-grained description of this model renders odd viscoelasticity. The particles are odd dumbbells, each featuring a robotic device…
Many biological active agents respond to gradients of environmental cues by redirecting their motion. Besides the well-studied prominent examples such as photo- and chemotaxis, there has been considerable recent interest in topotaxis, i.e.\…
Recent studies of the phase diagram for spherical, purely repulsive, active particles established the existence of a transition from a liquid-like to a solid-like phase analogous to the one observed in colloidal systems at thermal…
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 self-sustained motion of fluids on gradient substrates is a spectacular phenomenon, which can be employed and controlled in applications by carefully engineering the substrate properties. Here, we report on a design of a gel substrate…