Generic flow profiles induced by a beating cilium

Abstract

We describe a multipole expansion for the low Reynolds number fluid flows generated by a localized source embedded in a plane with a no-slip boundary condition. It contains 3 independent terms that fall quadratically with the distance and 6 terms that fall with the third power. Within this framework we discuss the flows induced by a beating cilium described in different ways: a small particle circling on an elliptical trajectory, a thin rod and a general ciliary beating pattern. We identify the flow modes present based on the symmetry properties of the ciliary beat.

12 pages, 6 figures, to appear in EPJ E

References in corpus (5)

• The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms
• Direct measurement of the flow field around swimming microorganisms
• Spontaneous creation of macroscopic flow and metachronal waves in an array of cilia
• Fluid transport at low Reynolds number with magnetically actuated artificial cilia
• A boundary element regularised Stokeslet method applied to cilia and flagella-driven flow