Physics – Condensed Matter – Soft Condensed Matter
Scientific paper
2010-03-05
Phys. Rev. E 82, 015302(R) (2010)
Physics
Condensed Matter
Soft Condensed Matter
4 pages, 4 figures
Scientific paper
The possibility of microscopic swimming by extraction of energy from an external flow is discussed, focusing on the migration of a simple trimer across a linear shear flow. The geometric properties of swimming, together with the possible generalization to the case of a vesicle, are analyzed.The mechanism of energy extraction from the flow appears to be the generalization to a discrete swimmer of the tank-treading regime of a vesicle. The swimmer takes advantage of the external flow by both extracting energy for swimming and "sailing" through it. The migration velocity is found to scale linearly in the stroke amplitude, and not quadratically as in a quiescent fluid. This effect turns out to be connected with the non-applicability of the scallop theorem in the presence of external flow fields.
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