Related papers: Confinement-induced motion of ciliates
Recent experiments and numerical simulations have shown that certain types of microorganisms "reflect" off of a flat surface at a critical angle of departure, independent of the angle of incidence. The nature of the reflection may be active…
When tiny soft ferromagnetic particles are placed along a liquid interface and exposed to a vertical magnetic field, the balance between capillary attraction and magnetic repulsion leads to self-organization into well-defined patterns.…
Under partial confinement, the motion of colloidal particles is restricted to a plane but their dynamics is influenced by hydrodynamic interactions mediated by the unconfined, three--dimensional flow of the embedding fluid. We demonstrate…
We study swimming of small spherical particles who regulate fluid flow on their surface by applying tangential squirming strokes. We derive translational and rotational velocities for any given stroke which is not restricted by axial…
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…
Electromagnetically propelled helical nanoswimmers offer great potential for nanorobotic applications. Here, the effect of confinement on their propulsion is characterized using lattice-Boltzmann simulations. Two principal mechanisms give…
Microswimmers display an intriguing ability to navigate through fluids with spatially varying viscosity, a behavior known as viscotaxis, which plays a crucial role in guiding their motion. In this study, we reveal that the orientation…
On surfaces with many motile cilia, beats of the individual cilia coordinate to form metachronal waves. We present a theoretical framework that connects the dynamics of an individual cilium to the collective dynamics of a ciliary carpet via…
In biological systems, microswimmers often propel themselves through complex media. However, many aspects of swimming mechanisms in non-Newtonian fluids remain unclear. This study considers the propulsion of two types of single spherical…
Swimming microorganisms often have to propel in complex, non-Newtonian fluids. We carry out experiments with self-propelling helical swimmers driven by an externally rotating magnetic field in shear-thinning, inelastic fluids. Similarly to…
Deformable boundaries are omnipresent in the habitats of swimming microorganisms, leading to intricate hydroelastic couplings. Employing a perturbation theory, valid for small deformations, we study the swimming dynamics of pushers and…
A potential theory is presented for the problem of two moving cylinders, with possibly different radii, large motions, immersed in an perfect stagnant fluid. We show that the fluid force is the superposition of an added mass term, related…
Suspensions of unicellular microswimmers such as flagellated bacteria or motile algae exhibit spontaneous density heterogeneities at large enough concentrations. Based on the relative location of the biological actuation appendages i.e.…
We consider a finite-dimensional model for the motion of microscopic organisms whose propulsion exploits the action of a layer of cilia covering its surface. The model couples Newton's laws driving the organism, considered as a rigid body,…
The hydrodynamics of a flagellated microorganism is investigated when swimming close to a planar free-slip surface by means of numerical solu- tions of the Stokes equations obtained via a Boundary Element Method. Depending on the initial…
We examine the hydrodynamic performance of two cilia beating patterns reconstructed from experimental data. In their respective natural systems, the two beating patterns correspond to: (A) pumping-specialized cilia, and (B)…
Motivated by recent experiments, we consider the hydrodynamic capture of a microswimmer near a stationary spherical obstacle. Simulations of model equations show that a swimmer approaching a small spherical colloid is simply scattered. In…
Microorganisms naturally move in microstructured fluids. Using the simulation method of multi-particle collision dynamics, we study an undulatory Taylor line swimming in a two-dimensional microchannel and in a cubic lattice of obstacles,…
Spontaneous growth of long-wavelength deformations is a defining feature of active fluids with orientational order. We investigate the effect of biaxial rectangular confinement on the instability of initially shear-aligned 3D isotropic…
Micro-swimmers can serve as cargo carriers that move deep inside complex flow networks. When a school collectively entrains the surrounding fluid, their transport capacity can be enhanced. This effect is quantified with good agreement…