A simulation study of the dynamics of a driven filament in an Aristotelian fluid

We describe a method, based on techniques used in molecular dynamics, for simulating the inertialess dynamics of an elastic filament immersed in a fluid. The model is used to study the “one-armed swimmer”. That is, a flexible appendage externally perturbed at one extremity. For small-amplitude motio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of theoretical biology Vol. 224; no. 2; pp. 215 - 224
Main Authors Lagomarsino, M.C., Capuani, F., Lowe, C.P.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Elsevier Ltd 21.09.2003
Subjects
Bacterial Physiological Phenomena
Biophysical Phenomena
Biophysics
Elastic filament
Hydrodynamics
Kinetics
Locomotion - physiology
Low Reynolds number
Mathematics
Microorganism motility
Models, Biological
Motion
Movement
Rheology
Sperm Motility - physiology
Swimming - physiology
Microorganism motility
Hydrodynamics
Elastic filament
Low Reynolds number
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Summary:We describe a method, based on techniques used in molecular dynamics, for simulating the inertialess dynamics of an elastic filament immersed in a fluid. The model is used to study the “one-armed swimmer”. That is, a flexible appendage externally perturbed at one extremity. For small-amplitude motion our simulations confirm theoretical predictions that, for a filament of given length and stiffness, there is a driving frequency that is optimal for both speed and efficiency. However, we find that to calculate absolute values of the swimming speed we need to slightly modify existing theoretical approaches. For the more relevant case of large-amplitude motion we find that while the basic picture remains the same, the dependence of the swimming speed on both frequency and amplitude is substantially modified. For large-amplitudes we show that the one-armed swimmer is comparatively neither inefficient nor slow. This begs the question, why are there little or no one-armed swimmers in nature?
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ISSN:0022-5193
1095-8541
DOI:10.1016/S0022-5193(03)00159-0