Related papers: A frictionless microswimmer
Active matter exhibits various forms of non-equilibrium states in the absence of external forcing, including macroscopic steady-state currents. Such states are often too complex to be modelled from first principles and our understanding of…
Microswimmers are often found in heterogeneous and crowded environments within narrow conduits under external flow conditions, enabling them to perform interesting translational and rotational maneuvers, such as swimming in the upstream…
The swimming of a pair of spherical bladders that change their volumes and mutual distance is efficient at low Reynolds numbers and is superior to other models of artificial swimmers. The change of shape resembles the wriggling motion known…
An approximation to the added mass matrix of an assembly of spheres is constructed on the basis of potential flow theory for situations where one sphere is much larger than the others. In the approximation the flow potential near a small…
In most macro-scale robotics systems , propulsion and controls are enabled through a physical tether or complex on-board electronics and batteries. A tether simplifies the design process but limits the range of motion of the robot, while…
We explore hydrodynamic interactions between microswimmers and corrugated, or rough, surfaces, as found often in biological systems and microfluidic devices. Using the Lorentz reciprocal theorem for viscous flows we derive exact expressions…
Small-scale locomotion plays an important role in biology. Different modelling approaches have been proposed in the past. The simplest model is an infinite inextensible two-dimensional waving sheet, {originally introduced by Taylor}, which…
The dynamics of a spheroidal vesicle, bounded by an inextensible membrane, is analyzed in function of the enclosed fluid viscosity, and of the membrane mechanical properties. The two situations in which a bending rigidity and a shear…
In this paper we study the locomotion of a shape-changing body swimming in a two-dimensional perfect fluid of infinite extent. The shape-changes are prescribed as functions of time satisfying constraints ensuring that they result from the…
Both natural and artificial small-scale swimmers may often self-propel in environments subject to complex geometrical constraints. While most past theoretical work on low-Reynolds number locomotion addressed idealised geometrical…
The swimming of a two-sphere system oscillating in a viscous fluidis studied on the basis of simplified equations of motion which take account of both friction and inertial effects. In the model the friction follows from an Oseen…
Biological and synthetic microswimmers display a wide range of swimming trajectories depending on driving forces and torques. In this paper we consider a simple overdamped model of self-propelled particles with a constant self-propulsion…
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…
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…
We theoretically investigate the effect of random fluctuations on the motion of elongated microswimmers near hydrodynamic transport barriers in externally-driven fluid flows. Focusing on the two-dimensional hyperbolic flow, we consider the…
We experimentally study a scallop-like swimmer with reciprocally flapping wings in a nearly frictionless, cohesive granular medium consisting of hydrogel spheres. Significant locomotion is found when the swimmer's flapping frequency matches…
Over the past few decades, oscillating flexible foils have been used to study the physics of organismal propulsion in different fluid environments. Here we extend this work to a study of flexible foils in a frictional environment. When the…
Achieving macroscopic directed migration of microscale swimmers in a fluid is an important step towards utilizing their autonomous motion. It has been experimentally shown that directed motion can be induced, without any external fields, by…
The ability of microswimmers to deploy optimal propulsion strategies is of paramount importance for their locomotory performance and survival at low Reynolds numbers. Although for perfectly spherical swimmers minimum dissipation requires a…
We present a two dimensional model of hydrodynamic interaction between a circular swimmer and a circular post at low Reynolds number, using a point singularity description of the swimming activity. We derive a nonlinear dynamical system…