Ciliary propulsion, chaotic filtration and a `blinking' stokeslet (Q1364018): Difference between revisions

The authors discuss the fundamental singularity of Stokes flow in context of applications to locomotion and feeding currents in microorganism. It is reported that the image system for a stokeslet in a rigid plane boundary can be derived by using the Lorentz's mirror image technique or by an appropriate limit of Oseen's solution for a sphere near a plane boundary. The authors present an alternative derivation by using Fourier transform methods which leads to an immediate physical interpretation of the image system in terms of a stokeslet and its multipole derivatives. The schematic illustration of a stokeslet and its image system in a plane boundary are exploited to explain the fluid dynamical principles of ciliary propulsion. For a point force oriented normal to the plane boundary, the resulting axisymmetric motion leads to a Stokes streamfunction representation which illustrates the toroidal eddy structure of the flow field. The authors obtain a similar eddy structure for two-dimensional system replacing toroidal structure by two eddies. A closed streamlined model is developed to model chaotic filtration which uses the concept of a blinking stokeslet (a stokeslet variation in its vertical position according to a prescribed regime). The resulting behaviour is illustrated via Poincaré sections, particle dispersion, and length of particle path tracings. Finally, the authors remark that sessile microorganisms can exploit a similar process, namely they can filter as large volume of fluid as possible in search of food and nutrients.