Collinear swimmer propelling a cargo sphere at low Reynolds number

Abstract

The swimming velocity and rate of dissipation of a linear chain consisting of two or three little spheres and a big sphere is studied on the basis of low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The big sphere is treated as a passive cargo, driven by the tail of little spheres via hydrodynamic and direct elastic interaction. The fundamental solution of Stokes' equations in the presence of a sphere with no-slip boundary condition, as derived by Oseen, is used to model the hydrodynamic interactions between the big sphere and the little spheres.

15 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (6)

• The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms
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• Floppy swimming: Viscous locomotion of actuated elastica
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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Intermediate scattering function of an anisotropic active Brownian particle
• Hydrodynamic interactions between a sphere and a number of small particles
• Swimming of a linear chain with a cargo in an incompressible viscous fluid with inertia