Passive swimming in low Reynolds number flows

The possibility of microscopic swimming by extraction of energy from an external flow is discussed, focusing on the migration of a simple trimer across a linear shear flow. The geometric properties of swimming, together with the possible generalization to the case of a vesicle, are analyzed.The mechanism of energy extraction from the flow appears to be the generalization to a discrete swimmer of the tank-treading regime of a vesicle. The swimmer takes advantage of the external flow by both extracting energy for swimming and "sailing" through it. The migration velocity is found to scale linearly in the stroke amplitude, and not quadratically as in a quiescent fluid. This effect turns out to be connected with the non-applicability of the scallop theorem in the presence of external flow fields.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Efficiency of surface-driven motion: nano-swimmers beat micro-swimmers

Surface interactions provide a class of mechanisms which can be employed for propulsion of micro- and nanometer sized particles. We investigate the related efficiency of externally and self-propelled swimmers. A general scaling relation is derived showing that only swimmers whose size is comparable to, or smaller than, the interaction range can have appreciable efficiency. An upper bound for efficiency at maximum power is 1/2. Numerical calculations for the case of diffusiophoresis are found to be in good agreement with analytical expressions for the efficiency

Pair diffusion, hydrodynamic interactions, and available volume in dense fluids

We calculate the pair diffusion coefficient D(r) as a function of the distance r between two hard-sphere particles in a dense monodisperse suspension. The distance-dependent pair diffusion coefficient describes the hydrodynamic interactions between particles in a fluid that are central to theories of polymer and colloid dynamics. We determine D(r) from the propagators (Green's functions) of particle pairs obtained from discontinuous molecular dynamics simulations. At distances exceeding 3 molecular diameters, the calculated pair diffusion coefficients are in excellent agreement with predictions from exact macroscopic hydrodynamic theory for large Brownian particles suspended in a solvent bath, as well as the Oseen approximation. However, the asymptotic 1/r distance dependence of D(r) associated with hydrodynamic effects emerges only after the pair distance dynamics has been followed for relatively long times, indicating non-negligible memory effects in the pair diffusion at short times. Deviations of the calculated D(r) from the hydrodynamic models at short distances r reflect the underlying many-body fluid structure, and are found to be correlated to differences in the local available volume. The procedure used here to determine the pair diffusion coefficients can also be used for single-particle diffusion in confinement with spherical symmetry.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Analytical solution of Stokes flow inside an evaporating sessile drop: Spherical and cylindrical cap shapes

Exact analytical solutions are derived for the Stokes flows within evaporating sessile drops of spherical and cylindrical cap shapes. The results are valid for arbitrary contact angle. Solutions are obtained for arbitrary evaporative flux distributions along the free surface as long as the flux is bounded at the contact line. The field equations, E^4(Psi)=0 and Del^4(Phi)=0, are solved for the spherical and cylindrical cap cases, respectively. Specific results and computations are presented for evaporation corresponding to uniform flux and to purely diffusive gas phase transport into an infinite ambient. Wetting and non-wetting contact angles are considered with the flow patterns in each case being illustrated. For the spherical cap with evaporation controlled by vapor phase diffusion, when the contact angle lies in the range 0<theta_c<pi, the mass flux of vapor becomes singular at the contact line. This condition required modification when solving for the liquid phase transport. Droplets in all of the above categories are considered for the following two cases: the contact lines are either pinned or free to move during evaporation. The present viscous flow behavior is compared to the inviscid flow behavior previously reported. It is seen that the streamlines for viscous flow lie farther from the substrate than the corresponding inviscid ones.Comment: Revised version; in review in Physics of Fluid

Self-diffusion in two-dimensional hard ellipsoid suspensions

We studied the self-diffusion of colloidal ellipsoids in a monolayer near a flat wall by video microscopy. The image processing algorithm can track the positions and orientations of ellipsoids with sub-pixel resolution. The translational and rotational diffusions were measured in both the lab frame and the body frame along the long and short axes. The long-time and short-time diffusion coefficients of translational and rotational motions were measured as functions of the particle concentration. We observed sub-diffusive behavior in the intermediate time regime due to the caging of neighboring particles. Both the beginning and the ending times of the intermediate regime exhibit power-law dependence on concentration. The long-time and short-time diffusion anisotropies change non-monotonically with concentration and reach minima in the semi-dilute regime because the motions along long axes are caged at lower concentrations than the motions along short axes. The effective diffusion coefficients change with time t as a linear function of (lnt)/t for the translational and rotational diffusions at various particle densities. This indicates that their relaxation functions decay according to 1/t which provides new challenges in theory. The effects of coupling between rotational and translational Brownian motions were demonstrated and the two time scales corresponding to anisotropic particle shape and anisotropic neighboring environment were measured

Finite-size effects in intracellular microrheology

We propose a model to explain finite-size effects in intracellular microrheology observed in experiments. The constrained dynamics of the particles in the intracellular medium, treated as a viscoelastic medium, is described by means of a diffusion equation in which interactions of the particles with the cytoskeleton are modelled by a harmonic force. The model reproduces the observed power-law behavior of the mean-square displacement in which the exponent depends on the ratio between particle-to-cytoskeleton-network sizes.Comment: 6 pages 2 figures. To appear in the Journal of Chemical Physic

Hydrodynamic friction of fakir-like super-hydrophobic surfaces

A fluid droplet located on a super-hydrophobic surface makes contact with the surface only at small isolated regions, and is mostly in contact with the surrounding air. As a result, a fluid in motion near such a surface experiences very low friction, and super-hydrophobic surfaces display strong drag-reduction in the laminar regime. Here we consider theoretically a super-hydrophobic surface composed of circular posts (so called fakir geometry) located on a planar rectangular lattice. Using a superposition of point forces with suitably spatially-dependent strength, we derive the effective surface slip length for a planar shear flow on such a fakir surface as the solution to an infinite series of linear equations. In the asymptotic limit of small surface coverage by the posts, the series can be interpreted as Riemann sums, and the slip length can be obtained analytically. For posts on a square lattice, our analytical results are in excellent quantitative agreement with previous numerical computations

Which canonical algebras are derived equivalent to incidence algebras of posets?

We give a full description of all the canonical algebras over an algebraically closed field that are derived equivalent to incidence algebras of finite posets. These are the canonical algebras whose number of weights is either 2 or 3.Comment: 8 pages; slight revision; to appear in Comm. Algebr

Simulating Brownian suspensions with fluctuating hydrodynamics

Fluctuating hydrodynamics has been successfully combined with several computational methods to rapidly compute the correlated random velocities of Brownian particles. In the overdamped limit where both particle and fluid inertia are ignored, one must also account for a Brownian drift term in order to successfully update the particle positions. In this paper, we present an efficient computational method for the dynamic simulation of Brownian suspensions with fluctuating hydrodynamics that handles both computations and provides a similar approximation as Stokesian Dynamics for dilute and semidilute suspensions. This advancement relies on combining the fluctuating force-coupling method (FCM) with a new midpoint time-integration scheme we refer to as the drifter-corrector (DC). The DC resolves the drift term for fluctuating hydrodynamics-based methods at a minimal computational cost when constraints are imposed on the fluid flow to obtain the stresslet corrections to the particle hydrodynamic interactions. With the DC, this constraint need only be imposed once per time step, reducing the simulation cost to nearly that of a completely deterministic simulation. By performing a series of simulations, we show that the DC with fluctuating FCM is an effective and versatile approach as it reproduces both the equilibrium distribution and the evolution of particulate suspensions in periodic as well as bounded domains. In addition, we demonstrate that fluctuating FCM coupled with the DC provides an efficient and accurate method for large-scale dynamic simulation of colloidal dispersions and the study of processes such as colloidal gelation

No many-scallop theorem: Collective locomotion of reciprocal swimmers

To achieve propulsion at low Reynolds number, a swimmer must deform in a way that is not invariant under time-reversal symmetry; this result is known as the scallop theorem. We show here that there is no many-scallop theorem. We demonstrate that two active particles undergoing reciprocal deformations can swim collectively; moreover, polar particles also experience effective long-range interactions. These results are derived for a minimal dimers model, and generalized to more complex geometries on the basis of symmetry and scaling arguments. We explain how such cooperative locomotion can be realized experimentally by shaking a collection of soft particles with a homogeneous external field