Micro-swimmer locomotion and hydrodynamics in Brinkman Flows

TL;DR

This paper models micro-swimmer locomotion in Brinkman fluids, revealing how resistance affects swimming speed and flow fields, and provides analytical tools for studying microorganisms in complex porous environments.

Contribution

It introduces exact and analytical models for swimmer velocity and flow fields in Brinkman media, extending classical Stokes flow results to porous environments.

Findings

Swimmer speed decreases monotonically with medium resistance.

Hydrodynamic screening attenuates long-range interactions.

Flow fields can be accurately approximated by Brinkmanlet dipoles.

Abstract

Micro-swimmer locomotion in heterogeneous media is increasingly relevant in biological physics due to the prevalence of microorganisms in complex environments. A model for such porous media is the Brinkman fluid which accounts for a sparse matrix of stationary obstacles via a linear resistance term in the momentum equation. We investigate two models for the locomotion and the flow field generated by a swimmer in such a medium. First, we analyze a dumbbell swimmer composed of two spring-connected spheres and driven by a flagellar force and derive its exact swimming velocity as a function of the Brinkman medium resistance, showing that the swimmer monotonically slows down as the medium drag monotonically increases. In the limit of no resistance the model reduces to the classical Stokes dipole swimmer, while finite resistance introduces hydrodynamic screening that attenuates long-range interactions. Additionally, we derive an analytical expression for the far-field flow generated by a Brinkmanlet force-dipole, which can be used for propulsive point-dipole swimmer models. Remarkably, this approximation reproduces the dumbbell swimmer's flow field in the far-field regime with high accuracy. These results provide new analytical tools for understanding locomotion in complex fluids and offer foundational insights for future studies on collective behavior in active and passive suspensions within porous or structured environments.