Simulations of Model Microswimmers with Fully Resolved Hydrodynamics

Abstract

Swimming microorganisms, which include bacteria, algae, and spermatozoa, play a fundamental role in most biological processes. These swimmers are a special type of active particle, that continuously convert local energy into propulsive forces, thereby allowing them to move through their surrounding fluid medium. While the size, shape, and propulsion mechanism vary from one organism to the next, they share certain general characteristics: they exhibit force-free motion and they swim at a small Reynolds number. To study the dynamics of such systems, we use the squirmer model, which provides an ideal representation of swimmers as spheroidal particles that propel owing to a modified boundary condition at their surface. We have considered the single-particle and many-particle dynamics of swimmers in bulk and confined systems using the smoothed profile method, which allows us to efficiently solve the coupled particle-fluid problem. For the single-particle dynamics, we studied the diffusive behavior caused by th...