Modeling bacterial flow field with regularized singularities

TL;DR

This paper introduces a combined regularized model for bacterial flow fields that accurately captures near- and far-field hydrodynamics, validated by experiments and simulations, aiding the study of bacterial interactions.

Contribution

It proposes a novel model combining anisotropic stresslet and isotropic source dipole to better reproduce bacterial flow fields near surfaces and in free space.

Findings

The model accurately reproduces flow fields around E. coli.

Validation through experiments and boundary-element simulations.

Applicable to studying dense bacterial suspensions.

Abstract

The flow field generated by a swimming bacterium serves as a fundamental building block for understanding hydrodynamic interactions between bacteria. Although the flow field generated by a force dipole (stresslet) well captures the fluid motion in the far field limit, the stresslet description does not work in the near-field limit, which can be important in microswimmer interactions. Here we propose the model combining an anisotropically regularized stresslet with an isotropically regularized source dipole, and it nicely reproduces the flow field around a swimming bacterium, which is validated by the experimental measurements of the flow field around \textit{E. coli} and our boundary-element-method simulations of a helical microswimmer, in both cases of the free space and the confined space with a no-slip wall. This work provides a practical tool for obtaining the flow field of the bacterium, and can be utilised to study the collective responses of bacteria in dense suspensions.