Stress relaxation in a dilute bacterial suspension: the active-passive transition

DOI10.1017/JFM.2019.278MaRDI QIDQ5379065zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Sankalp Nambiar, S. Phanikanth, Prabhu R. Nott, Ganesh Subramanian

Publication date 28 May 2019

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

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.02102

zbMATH Keywords

suspensions

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Suspensions (76T20) Biopropulsion in water and in air (76Z10)

Abstract: We analyse the time dependent non-linear rheology of a dilute bacterial suspension (e.g. E. coli) for a pair of impulsively started linear flows - simple shear and uniaxial extension. The rheology is governed by the bacterium orientation distribution which satisfies a kinetic equation that includes rotation by the imposed flow, and relaxation to isotropy via rotary diffusion and tumbling. The relevant dimensionless parameters are the Peclet number $Peequivdotgammaau$, which dictates the importance of flow-induced orientation anisotropy, and $au{D}_r$, which quantifies the relative importance of the two intrinsic orientation decorrelation mechanisms (tumbling and rotary diffusion). Here, $au$ is the mean run duration of a bacterium that exhibits a run-and-tumble dynamics, $D_r$ is the intrinsic rotary diffusivity of the bacterium and $dotgamma$ is the characteristic magnitude of the imposed velocity gradient. The solution of the kinetic equation is obtained numerically using a spectral Galerkin method, and yields the relevant rheological properties over the entire range of $Pe$. For simple shear, the stress relaxation predicted by our analysis at small $Pe$ is in good agreement with the experimental observations of Lopez et al. (2015). However, the analysis at large $Pe$ yields relaxations that are qualitatively different. The rheological response in the experiments corresponds to a transition from a nearly isotropic suspension of active swimmers at small $Pe$, to an apparently (nearly) isotropic suspension of passive rods at large $Pe$. In contrast, the computations yield the expected transition to a nearly flow-aligned suspension of passive rigid rods at high $Pe$. We probe this active-passive transition systematically, complementing the numerical solution with analytical solutions obtained from perturbation expansions about appropriate base states.

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Cites work

• Collective hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms: living fluids
• Collective motion in a suspension of micro-swimmers that run-and-tumble and~rotary~diffuse
• Concentration banding instability of a sheared bacterial suspension
• Critical bacterial concentration for the onset of collective swimming
• Mathematical methods for physicists. A comprehensive guide
• Rheology of a dilute suspension of axisymmetric Brownian particles
• Rheology of Active Fluids
• Rheology of dilute suspensions of charged fibers
• Stress relaxation in a dilute bacterial suspension
• The rheology of a suspension of nearly spherical particles subject to Brownian rotations
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Cited in

(10)

• Rheology of sheared bacterial suspensions
• Dispersion of gyrotactic micro-organisms in pipe flows
• Shear-induced migration of microswimmers in pressure-driven channel flow
• Concentration banding instability of a sheared bacterial suspension
• Enhanced velocity fluctuations in interacting swimmer suspensions
• Transient dispersion process of active particles
• Stress relaxation in a dilute bacterial suspension
• Pre-asymptotic dispersion of active particles through a vertical pipe: the origin of hydrodynamic focusing
• Taylor-Aris dispersion of active particles in oscillatory channel flows
• Dispersion of microswimmers in a vertical pipe flow with diffuse-reflection boundary condition

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