Transport of a dilute active suspension in pressure-driven channel flow

TL;DR

This study combines theory and simulations to analyze how confinement and shear flow influence the behavior of dilute active suspensions, revealing wall accumulation, upstream swimming, and boundary layer formation without hydrodynamic interactions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed kinetic model for active particle suspensions under confinement and flow, deriving analytical expressions for distribution, concentration, and polarization profiles.

Findings

Wall accumulation occurs primarily due to kinematic effects.

Active particles exhibit upstream swimming in pressure-driven flow.

Boundary layers form in wide channels, matching experimental observations.

Abstract

Confined suspensions of active particles show peculiar dynamics characterized by wall accumulation, as well as upstream swimming, centerline depletion and shear-trapping when a pressure-driven flow is imposed. We use theory and numerical simulations to investigate the effects of confinement and non-uniform shear on the dynamics of a dilute suspension of Brownian active swimmers by incorporating a detailed treatment of boundary conditions within a simple kinetic model where the configuration of the suspension is described using a conservation equation for the probability distribution function of particle positions and orientations, and where particle-particle and particle-wall hydrodynamic interactions are neglected. Based on this model, we first investigate the effects of confinement in the absence of flow, in which case the dynamics is governed by a swimming Peclet number, or ratio of the persistence length of particle trajectories over the channel width, and a second swimmer-specific parameter whose inverse measures the strength of propulsion. In the limit of weak and strong propulsion, asymptotic expressions for the full distribution function are derived. For finite propulsion, analytical expressions for the concentration and polarization profiles are also obtained using a truncated moment expansion of the distribution function. In agreement with experimental observations, the existence of a concentration/polarization boundary layer in wide channels is reported and characterized, suggesting that wall accumulation in active suspensions is primarily a kinematic effect which does not require hydrodynamic interactions. Next, we show that application of a pressure-driven Poiseuille flow leads to net upstream swimming of the particles relative to the flow, and an analytical expression for the mean upstream velocity is derived in the weak flow limit. In stronger imposed flows ......