Related papers: Locomotion on a lubricating fluid with spatial vis…
Soft lubrication has been shown to drastically affect the mobility of an object immersed in a viscous fluid in the vicinity of a purely elastic wall. In this theoretical study, we develop a minimal model incorporating viscoelasticity,…
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 movement of subaqueous sediment in laminar shearing flow is numerically investigated by the coupled lattice Boltzmann and discrete element methods. First, the numerical method is validated by comparing the phase diagram proposed by…
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…
Microscopic robots could perform tasks with high spatial precision, such as acting in biological tissues on the scale of individual cells, provided they can reach precise locations. This paper evaluates the feasibility of in vivo locomotion…
We present an investigation into the response of a viscous fluid flowing over a sloped bed across a spatially finite patch of basal lubrication. We present a simple analytical model that captures the fundamental structure of such…
A number of swimming microorganisms such as ciliates ($\textit{Opalina}$) and multicellular colonies of flagellates ($\textit{Volvox}$) are approximately spherical in shape and swim using beating arrays of cilia or short flagella covering…
A concentrated, vertical monolayer of identical spherical squirmers, which may be bottom-heavy, and which are subjected to a linear shear flow, is modelled computationally by two different methods: Stokesian dynamics, and a…
In this work, we analyze the motion of an active particle, modeled as a spherical squirmer, in linearly varying viscosity fields. In general, the presence of a particle will disturb a background viscosity field and the disturbance generated…
This paper examines the rigid body motion of a spheroid sedimenting in a Newtonian fluid with a spatially varying viscosity field. The fluid is at zero Reynolds number, and the viscosity varies linearly in space in an arbitrary direction…
By viewing a velocity gradient in a fluid as an internal disturbance and treating it as a constraint on the wave function of a system, a linear evolution equation for the wave function is obtained from the Lagrange multiplier method. It…
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.…
Intricate fluid displacement patterns, arising from the unstable growth of interfacial perturbations, can be driven by fluid viscoelasticity and surface tension. A soft glassy suspension ages, $i.e.$ its mechanical moduli evolve with time,…
In this paper, we give formulas for the swimming of simplified two-dimensional bodies in complex fluids using the reciprocal theorem. By way of these formulas we calculate the swimming velocity due to small-amplitude deformations on the…
A lubrication model can be used to describe the dynamics of a weakly volatile viscous fluid layer on a hydrophobic substrate. Thin layers of the fluid are unstable to perturbations and break up into slowly evolving interacting droplets. A…
Legged rovers provide enhanced mobility compared to wheeled platforms, enabling navigation on steep and irregular planetary terrains. However, traditional legged locomotion might be energetically inefficient and potentially dangerous to the…
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…
Many small organisms self-propel in viscous fluids using travelling wave-like deformation of their bodies or appendages. Examples include small nematodes moving through soil using whole-body undulations or spermatozoa swimming through mucus…
In this paper we tackle the problem of visually predicting surface friction for environments with diverse surfaces, and integrating this knowledge into biped robot locomotion planning. The problem is essential for autonomous robot…
Micro-organisms expend energy moving through complex media. While propulsion speed is an important property of locomotion, efficiency is another factor that may determine the swimming gait adopted by a micro-organism in order to locomote in…