Low-Reynolds number swimming in a capillary tube

TL;DR

This study uses boundary element simulations to analyze how low-Reynolds number microorganisms swim in confined capillary tubes, revealing the effects of hydrodynamics on speed, stability, and trajectories, with implications for artificial microswimmer design.

Contribution

The paper provides a detailed computational analysis of microorganism locomotion in confined geometries, highlighting the influence of hydrodynamic interactions on swimming behavior and stability.

Findings

Hydrodynamic interactions significantly alter swimming speed and power consumption.

Swimmers with no force-dipoles follow helical trajectories due to wall interactions.

Puller-type swimmers exhibit stable motion depending on dipole strength, while pusher-type are unstable.

Abstract

We use the boundary element method to study the low-Reynolds number locomotion of a spherical model microorganism in a circular tube. The swimmer propels itself by tangen- tial or normal surface motion in a tube whose radius is on the order of the swimmer size. Hydrodynamic interactions with the tube walls significantly affect the average swimming speed and power consumption of the model microorganism. In the case of swimming parallel to the tube axis, the locomotion speed is always reduced (resp. increased) for swimmers with tangential (resp. normal) deformation. In all cases, the rate of work nec- essary for swimming is increased by confinement. Swimmers with no force-dipoles in the far field generally follow helical trajectories, solely induced by hydrodynamic interactions with the tube walls, and in qualitative agreement with recent experimental observations for Paramecium. Swimmers of the puller type always display stable locomotion at a lo- cation which depends on the strength of their force dipoles: swimmers with weak dipoles (small {\alpha}) swim in the centre of the tube while those with strong dipoles (large {\alpha}) swim near the walls. In contrast, pusher swimmers and those employing normal deformation are unstable and end up crashing into the walls of the tube. Similar dynamics is observed for swimming into a curved tube. These results could be relevant for the future design of artificial microswimmers in confined geometries.