Effective and efficient modeling of the hydrodynamics for bacterial flagella

TL;DR

This paper presents a sphere-based modeling approach for bacterial flagella hydrodynamics, enabling efficient analysis of bacterial motility and interactions with boundaries, highlighting discrepancies with traditional theories.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel sphere-based resistance matrix model for flagella, improving efficiency and accuracy over existing methods in simulating bacterial motility near boundaries.

Findings

Significant differences between twin multipole and resistive force theory results.

Neglecting hydrodynamic interactions causes substantial inaccuracies.

Model effectively captures bacterial motility near spherical boundaries.

Abstract

The hydrodynamic interactions among bacterial cell bodies, flagella, and surrounding boundaries are essential for understanding bacterial motility in complex environments. In this study, we demonstrate that each slender flagellum can be modeled as a series of spheres, and that the interactions between these spheres can be accurately characterized using a resistance matrix. This approach allows us to effectively and efficiently evaluate the propulsive effects of the flagella. Notably, our investigation into bacterial motility near a colloidal sphere reveals significant discrepancies between results derived from the twin multipole moment and those obtained through resistive force theory. Consequently, neglecting the hydrodynamic interactions among cell bodies, flagella, and colloidal spheres may lead to substantial inaccuracies. Our model simplifies bacteria into a series of spheres, making it well-suited for examining bacterial motility near spherical boundaries, as well as the nonlinear deformation dynamics of elastic flagella.