Elastic three-sphere microswimmer in a viscous fluid
arXiv:1707.03580 · doi:10.7566/JPSJ.86.093801
Abstract
We discuss the dynamics of a generalized three-sphere microswimmer in which the spheres are connected by two elastic springs. The natural length of each spring is assumed to undergo a prescribed cyclic change. We analytically obtain the average swimming velocity as a function of the frequency of the cyclic change in the natural length. In the low-frequency region, the swimming velocity increases with the frequency and its expression reduces to that of the original three-sphere model by Najafi and Golestanian. In the high-frequency region, conversely, the average velocity decreases with increasing the frequency. Such a behavior originates from the intrinsic spring relaxation dynamics of an elastic swimmer moving in a viscous fluid.
References in corpus (6)
- The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms
- Analytic results for the three-sphere swimmer at low Reynolds number
- Mechanical Response of a Small Swimmer Driven by Conformational Transitions
- Three-Sphere Low Reynolds Number Swimmer with a Cargo Container
- Dynamics and optimal actuation of a three-sphere low-Reynolds-number swimmer with muscle-like arms
- Swimmer-microrheology