Modeling and computations of self-propelled elastic cylindrical micro-swimmers

Date: 

Thursday, 16 June, 2016 - 11:00

SISSA mathLab Seminar, room A-136

Prof. Annalisa Quaini, Math Dept., University of Houston, TX, USA.

ABSTRACT: We study propulsion of micro-swimmers in 3D creeping flow. The swimmers are assumed to be made of elastic cylindrical hollow tubes. The swimming is generated by the contractions of the tube's elastic membrane walls producing a traveling wave  in the form of a ``step-function'' traversing the swimmer from right to left, propelling the swimmer from left to right. The problem is motivated by medical applications such as drug delivery. The influence of several non-dimensional design parameters on the velocity of the swimmer is investigated, including the swimmer aspect ratio, and the amplitude of the traveling wave relative to the swimmer radius. An immersed boundary method based on a finite element method approach is successfully combined with an elastic spring network model to simulate the two-way fluid-structure interaction coupling between the elastic cylindrical tube and the flow of a 3D viscous, incompressible fluid. To gain a deeper insight into the influence of various parameters on the swimmer speed, a reduced 1D fluid-structure interaction model was derived and validated. It was found that fast swimmers are those with large tube aspect ratios, and with the amplitude of the traveling wave which is roughly 50\% of the reference swimmer radius.

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