TY - JOUR
T1 - State diagram of a three-sphere microswimmer in a channel
AU - Daddi-Moussa-Ider, Abdallah
AU - Lisicki, Maciej
AU - Mathijssen, Arnold J.T.M.
AU - Hoell, Christian
AU - Goh, Segun
AU - Bławzdziewicz, Jerzy
AU - Menzel, Andreas M.
AU - Löwen, Hartmut
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd.
Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/6/1
Y1 - 2018/6/1
N2 - Geometric confinements are frequently encountered in soft matter systems and in particular significantly alter the dynamics of swimming microorganisms in viscous media. Surface-related effects on the motility of microswimmers can lead to important consequences in a large number of biological systems, such as biofilm formation, bacterial adhesion and microbial activity. On the basis of low-Reynolds-number hydrodynamics, we explore the state diagram of a three-sphere microswimmer under channel confinement in a slit geometry and fully characterize the swimming behavior and trajectories for neutral swimmers, puller- and pusher-type swimmers. While pushers always end up trapped at the channel walls, neutral swimmers and pullers may further perform a gliding motion and maintain a stable navigation along the channel. We find that the resulting dynamical system exhibits a supercritical pitchfork bifurcation in which swimming in the mid-plane becomes unstable beyond a transition channel height while two new stable limit cycles or fixed points that are symmetrically disposed with respect to the channel mid-height emerge. Additionally, we show that an accurate description of the averaged swimming velocity and rotation rate in a channel can be captured analytically using the method of hydrodynamic images, provided that the swimmer size is much smaller than the channel height.
AB - Geometric confinements are frequently encountered in soft matter systems and in particular significantly alter the dynamics of swimming microorganisms in viscous media. Surface-related effects on the motility of microswimmers can lead to important consequences in a large number of biological systems, such as biofilm formation, bacterial adhesion and microbial activity. On the basis of low-Reynolds-number hydrodynamics, we explore the state diagram of a three-sphere microswimmer under channel confinement in a slit geometry and fully characterize the swimming behavior and trajectories for neutral swimmers, puller- and pusher-type swimmers. While pushers always end up trapped at the channel walls, neutral swimmers and pullers may further perform a gliding motion and maintain a stable navigation along the channel. We find that the resulting dynamical system exhibits a supercritical pitchfork bifurcation in which swimming in the mid-plane becomes unstable beyond a transition channel height while two new stable limit cycles or fixed points that are symmetrically disposed with respect to the channel mid-height emerge. Additionally, we show that an accurate description of the averaged swimming velocity and rotation rate in a channel can be captured analytically using the method of hydrodynamic images, provided that the swimmer size is much smaller than the channel height.
KW - biological fluid dynamics
KW - low-Reynolds-number hydrodynamics
KW - microswimmer
KW - swimming
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85048275856&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1361-648X/aac470
DO - 10.1088/1361-648X/aac470
M3 - Article
C2 - 29757157
AN - SCOPUS:85048275856
VL - 30
JO - Journal of Physics Condensed Matter
JF - Journal of Physics Condensed Matter
SN - 0953-8984
IS - 25
M1 - 254004
ER -