Effect of fluid inertia on the motion of a collinear swimmer

Abstract

The swimming of a two-sphere system and of a three-sphere chain in an incompressible viscous fluid is studied on the basis of simplified equations of motion which take account of both Stokes friction and added mass effects. The analysis is based on an explicit expression for the asymptotic periodic swimming velocity and a corresponding evaluation of the mean rate of dissipation. The mean swimming velocity of the two-sphere system is found to be non-vanishing provided that the two spheres are not identical. The swimming of a comparable chain of three identical spheres is much more efficient.

13 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Analytic results for the three-sphere swimmer at low Reynolds number

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Efficiency limits of the three-sphere swimmer
• The Scallop Theorem and Swimming at the Mesoscale
• Kinematics of a simple reciprocal model swimmer at intermediate Reynolds numbers
• Reciprocal swimming at intermediate Reynolds number
• Retarded hydrodynamic interaction between two spheres immersed in a viscous incompressible fluid
• Swimming of a linear chain with a cargo in an incompressible viscous fluid with inertia
• Optimizing the Mean Swimming Velocity of a Model Two-sphere Swimmer