A circle swimmer at low Reynolds number

Swimming in circles occurs in a variety of situations at low Reynolds number. Here we propose a simple model for a swimmer that undergoes circular motion, generalising the model of a linear swimmer proposed by Najafi and Golestanian (Phys. Rev. E 69, 062901 (2004)). Our model consists of three solid spheres arranged in a triangular configuration, joined by two links of time-dependent length. For small strokes, we discuss the motion of the swimmer as a function of the separation angle between its links. We find that swimmers describe either clockwise or anticlockwise circular motion depending on the tilting angle in a non-trivial manner. The symmetry of the swimmer leads to a quadrupolar decay of the far flow field. We discuss the potential extensions and experimental realisation of our model.

• Publication year

  2012

• Venue

  The European Physical Journal E : Soft matter

• Publication date

  2012-07-13

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Physics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1140/epje/i2012-12070-5arXiv 1207.3181PMID 22864542
• 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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