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Spiral swimming of an artificial micro-swimmer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2008

ERIC E. KEAVENY  and
MARTIN R. MAXEY
ERIC E. KEAVENY
Affiliation:
Division of Applied Mathematics, Brown University, 182 George Street, Box F, Providence, RI 02912, USA
MARTIN R. MAXEY
Affiliation:
Division of Applied Mathematics, Brown University, 182 George Street, Box F, Providence, RI 02912, USA
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Abstract

A device constructed from a filament of paramagnetic beads connected to a human red blood cell will swim when subject to an oscillating magnetic field. Bending waves propagate from the tip of the tail toward the red blood cell in a fashion analogous to flagellum beating, making the artificial swimmer a candidate for studying what has been referred to as ‘flexible oar’ micro-swimming. In this study, we demonstrate that under the influence of a rotating field the artificial swimmer will perform ‘corkscrew’-type swimming. We conduct numerical simulations of the swimmer where the paramagnetic tail is represented as a series of rigid spheres connected by flexible but inextensible links. An optimal range of parameters governing the relative strength of viscous, elastic and magnetic forces is identified for swimming speed. A parameterization of the motion is extracted and examined as a function of the driving frequency. With a continuous elastica/resistive force model, we obtain an expression for the swimming speed in the low-frequency limit. Using this expression we explore further the effects of the applied field, the ratio of the transverse field to the constant field, and the ratio of the radius of the sphere to the length of the filament tail on the resulting dynamics.

Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 598 , 10 March 2008 , pp. 293 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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