Rotation of slender swimmers in isotropic-drag media.

The drag anisotropy of slender filaments is a critical physical property allowing swimming in low-Reynolds number flows, and without it linear translation is impossible. Here we show that, in contrast, net rotation can occur under isotropic drag. We first demonstrate this result formally by considering the consequences of the force- and torque-free conditions on swimming bodies and we then illustrate it with two examples (a simple swimmers made of three rods and a model bacterium with two helical flagellar filaments). Our results highlight the different role of hydrodynamic forces in generating translational versus rotational propulsion.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Physical Review E

• Publication date

  2016-03-29

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Physics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1103/PhysRevE.93.043125arXiv 1603.08653PMID 27176408
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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