Swimming of microorganisms in quasi-two-dimensional membranes

DOI10.1017/JFM.2020.1043MaRDI QIDQ5149501zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Carlos Alas, Thomas R. Powers, Tatiana Kuriabova

Publication date 11 February 2021

Published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.02106

zbMATH Keywords

propulsionthin films

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Biopropulsion in water and in air (76Z10)

Abstract: Biological swimmers frequently navigate in geometrically restricted media. We study the prescribed-stroke problem of swimmers confined to a planar viscous membrane embedded in a bulk fluid of different viscosity. In their motion, microscopic swimmers disturb the fluid in both the membrane and the bulk. The flows that emerge have a combination of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic features, and such flows are referred to as quasi-2D. The cross-over from 2D to 3D hydrodynamics in a quasi-2D fluid is controlled by the Saffman length, a length scale given by the ratio of the 2D membrane viscosity to the 3D viscosity of the embedding bulk fluid. We have developed a computational and theoretical approach based on the boundary element method and the Lorentz reciprocal theorem to study the swimming of microorganisms for a range of values of the Saffman length. We found that a flagellum propagating transverse sinusoidal waves in a quasi-2D membrane can develop a swimming speed exceeding that in pure 2D or 3D fluids, while the propulsion of a two-dimensional squirmer is slowed down by the presence of the bulk fluid.

Recommendations

• Hydrodynamics of micro-swimmers in films
• Low-Reynolds-number swimming in a capillary tube
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• Analytical study for swimmers in a channel
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Cites work

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Cited in

(1)

• Do magnetic micro-swimmers move like eukaryotic cells?

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