Related papers: Durotaxis in viscoelastic fluids
Many swimming microorganisms, such as bacteria and sperm, use flexible flagella to move through viscoelastic media in their natural environments. In this paper we address the effects a viscoelastic fluid has on the motion and beating…
Our fluid dynamics video shows the response of a layer of viscoelastic fluid to an array of four-roll mills steadily rotating underneath. When the relaxation time of the fluid is sufficiently long, the fluid divides into "cells" with a…
We present a study of the hydrodynamics of an active particle, a model squirmer, in an envi- ronment with a broken rotational symmetry: a nematic liquid crystal. By combining simulations with analytic calculations, we show that the…
We study the dynamics of an ideal polymer chain in a crowded, viscoelastic medium and in the presence of active forces. The motion of the centre of mass and of individual monomers is calculated. On time scales that are comparable to the…
Understanding the transport of driven nano- and micro-particles in complex fluids is of relevance for many biological and technological applications. Here we perform hydrodynamic multiparticle collision dynamics simulations of spherical and…
A common feature of biological self-organization is how active agents communicate with each other or their environment via chemical signaling. Such communications, mediated by self-generated chemical gradients, have consequences for both…
The slow flow of amorphous solids exhibits striking heterogeneities: swift localised particle rearrangements take place in the midst of a more or less homogeneously deforming medium. Recently, experimental as well as numerical work has…
At the macroscopic scale, many important models of collective motion fall into the class of kinematic flows for which both velocity and diffusion terms depend only on particle density. When total particle numbers are fixed and finite,…
The dynamics of self-locomotion of active particles in aligned or liquid crystalline fluids strongly deviates from that in simple isotropic media. We explore the long-time dynamics of a swimmer moving in a three-dimensional smectic liquid…
Motivated by the aim of understanding the effect of media heterogeneity on the swimming dynamics of flagellated bacteria, we study the rotation and swimming of rigid helices in dilute suspensions experimentally and theoretically. We first…
We study the dynamics of extended rod-like bodies in (or associated with) membranes and films. We demonstrate a striking difference between the mobilities in films and bulk fluids, even when the dissipation is dominated by the fluid stress:…
It is frequent for active or living entities to find themselves embedded in a surrounding medium. Resulting composite systems are usually classified as either active fluids or active solids. Yet, in reality, particularly in the biological…
We develop a general hydrodynamic theory describing a system of interacting actively propelling particles of arbitrary shape suspended in a viscous fluid. We model the active part of the particle motion using a slip velocity prescribed on…
Water molecules confined between biological membranes exhibit a distinctive non-Gaussian displacement distribution, far different from bulk water. Here, we introduce a new transport equation for water molecules in the intermembrane space,…
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 impact of complex media on the dynamics of active swimmers has gained a thriving interest in the research community for their prominent applications in various fields. This paper investigates the effect of viscoelasticity on the…
The acoustofluidic method holds great promise for manipulating microorganisms. When exposed to the steady vortex structures of acoustic streaming flow, these microorganisms exhibit intriguing dynamic behaviors, such as hydrodynamic trapping…
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…
We develop general methods to calculate the mobilities of extended bodies in (or associated with) membranes and films. We demonstrate a striking difference between in-plane motion of rod-like inclusions and the corresponding case of bulk…
The transport of deformable particles through porous media underlies a wealth of applications ranging from filtration to oil recovery to the transport and spreading of biological agents. Using direct numerical simulations, we analyze the…