Self-buckling and self-writhing of semi-flexible microorganisms

Lough, Wilson; Weibel, Douglas B.; Spagnolie, Saverio E.

doi:10.1039/d3sm00572k

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 81 publications

(127 reference statements)

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“…Dynamics of long, thin, and flexible structures in Stokes flows have been studied in many earlier works [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. The motivation comes from biological systems, such as diatom chains in the ocean [15,16], actin filaments [17][18][19], bacterial flagella [20,21] or flagella and cilia of other microorganisms [22][23][24], and also from medical applications of micro-and nano-fibers produced for soft materials and drug delivery [25][26][27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Highly elastic fibers in a shear flow can form double helices

Słowicka,

Xue,

Liu

et al. 2024

New J. Phys.

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The long-time behavior of highly elastic fibers in a shear flow is investigated experimentally and numerically. Characteristic attractors of the dynamics are found. It is shown that for a small ratio of bending to hydrodynamic forces, most fibers form a spinning elongated double helix, performing an effective Jeffery orbit very close to the vorticity direction. Recognition of these oriented shapes, and how they form in time, may prove useful in the future for understanding the time history of complex microstructures in fluid flows and considering processing steps for their synthesis.

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