Complex dynamics of long, flexible fibers in shear

Abstract

The macroscopic properties of polymeric fluids are inherited from the material properties of the fibers embedded in the solvent. The behavior of such passive fibers in flow has been of interest in a wide range of systems, including cellular mechanics, nutrient aquisition by diatom chains in the ocean, and industrial applications such as paper manufacturing. The rotational dynamics and shape evolution of fibers in shear depends upon the slenderness of the fiber and the non-dimensional "elasto-viscous" number that measures the ratio of the fluid's viscous forces to the fiber's elastic forces. For a small elasto-viscous number, the nearly-rigid fiber rotates in the shear, but when the elasto-viscous number reaches a threshhold, buckling occurs. For even larger elasto-viscous numbers, there is a transition to a "snaking behavior" where the fiber remains aligned with the shear axis, but its ends curl in, in opposite directions. These experimentally-observed behaviors have recently been characterized computationally using slender-body theory and immersed boundary computations. However, classical experiments with nylon fibers and recent experiments with actin filaments have demonstrated that for even larger elasto-viscous numbers, multiple buckling sites and coiling can occur. Using a regularized Stokeslet framework coupled with a kernel independent fast multipole method, we present simulations that capture these complex fiber dynamics.

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Flexible filaments buckle into helicoidal shapes in strong compressional flows
• Buckling, Crumpling, and Tumbling of Semiflexible Sheets in Simple Shear Flow
• Flexible fibers in shear flow approach attracting periodic solutions
• Kernel Aggregated Fast Multipole Method: Efficient summation of Laplace and Stokes kernel functions
• Lévy Walks and Path Chaos in the Dispersal of Elongated Structures Moving across Cellular Vortical Flows
• Chaos and irreversibility of a flexible filament in periodically-driven Stokes flow
• Scaling law for a buckled elastic filament in a shear flow