Related papers: Preferential orientation of slender elastic floate…
We investigate the slow, second order motion of thin flexible floating strips drifting in surface gravity waves. We introduce a diffractionless model (Froude-Krylov approximation) that neglects viscosity, surface tension, and radiation…
We study the influence of capillary effects on the motion of thin elastic plates denser than water drifting in propagating surface gravity waves. Such floaters experience a mean angular drift that rotates them toward two preferential…
Elongated floaters drifting in propagating water waves slowly rotate towards a preferential orientation with respect to the direction of incidence. In this article, we study this phenomenon in the small-floater limit $k L_x < 1 $, with $k$…
Particles such as microplastics and phytoplankton suspended in the water column in the natural environment are often subject to the action of surface gravity waves. By modelling such anisotropic particles as small spheroids that slowly…
We present a simple experimental realization of a two-dimensional floating body that can remain in equilibrium in any orientation. This system is based on a class of shapes known as Zindler curves, which possess the remarkable geometric…
We combine theories of scattering for linearized water waves and flexural waves in thin plates to characterize and achieve control of water wave scattering using floating plates. This requires manipulating a sixth-order partial differential…
Recent studies show that spherical motile micro-organisms in turbulence subject to gravitational torques gather in down-welling regions of the turbulent flow. By analysing a statistical model we analytically compute how shape affects the…
Marine plankton are usually modeled as settling elongated micro-swimmers. For the first time, we consider the torque induced by fluid inertia on such swimmers, and we discover that they spontaneously swim in the direction opposite to…
We study the dynamics of gyrotactic microswimmers suspended in homogeneous and isotropic turbulence by using direct numerical simulations (DNS). The swimmers are characterized by three non-dimensional parameters: their aspect ratio…
We present laboratory experiments of surface wave turbulence excited by paddles in the deep water regime. The free surface is seeded with buoyant particles that are advected and dispersed by the flow. Positions and velocities of the…
We investigate hydrodynamic fluctuations in a 2D granular fluid excited by a vibrating base and in the presence of gravity, focusing on the transverse velocity modes. Since the system is inhomogeneous, we measure fluctuations in horizontal…
A slightly tilted permanent magnet rotating at high speed can induce a magnetic field capable of trapping another permanent magnet in a gravity independent levitated bound state, bypassing Earnshaw's theorem. During levitation, the floater…
Motivated by strategies for targeted microfluidic transport of droplets, we investigate how sessile droplets can be steered toward a preferred direction using travelling waves in substrate wettability or deformations of the substrate. To…
A pinned-free beam in axial fluid flow, subjected to feedback-based actuation at the pinned end, is investigated. The actuation may be a moment or a prescribed angle and it is proportional to the state (curvature, slope, or displacement) of…
Over a sufficiently long period of time, or from an appropriate distance, the motion of many swimmers can appear smooth, with their trajectories appearing almost ballistic in nature and slowly varying in character. These long-time…
Sand is a highly dissipative system, where the local spatial arrangements and densities depend strongly on the applied forces, resulting in fluid-like or solid-like behaviour. This makes sand swimming challenging and intriguing, raising…
We model the formation and evolution of wrinkles in a floating elastic sheet under uniaxial compression. This is a canonical setup in the study of wrinkling, and whilst its static equilibrium configuration is well characterised, its…
The linear instability of a beam tensioned by its own weight is considered. It is shown that for long beams, in the sense of an adequate dimensionless parameter, the characteristics of the instability caused by a follower force do not…
We study the dynamics and the statistics of dilute suspensions of gyrotactic swimmers, a model for many aquatic motile microorganisms. By means of extensive numerical simulations of the Navier-Stokes equations at different Reynolds numbers,…
We investigate the orientation dynamics of a neutrally buoyant spheroid, of an arbitrary aspect ratio ($\kappa$), freely rotating in a weakly viscoelastic fluid undergoing simple shear flow. Weak elasticity is characterized by a small but…