| Issue |
EPL
Volume 133, Number 3, February 2021
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 34001 | |
| Number of page(s) | 7 | |
| Section | Electromagnetism, Optics, Acoustics, Heat Transfer, Classical Mechanics, and Fluid Dynamics | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/133/34001 | |
| Published online | 30 March 2021 | |
Autonomous elastic microswimmer
1 Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, Tokyo Metropolitan University - Tokyo 192-0397, Japan
2 Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University - Sendai 980-8578, Japan
3 Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Chiba University - Chiba 263-8522, Japan
Received: 6 October 2020
Accepted: 15 December 2020
A model of an autonomous three-sphere microswimmer is proposed by implementing a coupling effect between the two natural lengths of an elastic microswimmer. Such a coupling mechanism is motivated by the previous models for synchronization phenomena in coupled oscillator systems. We numerically show that a microswimmer can acquire a nonzero steady state velocity and a finite phase difference between the oscillations in the natural lengths. These velocity and phase differences are almost independent of the initial phase difference. There is a finite range of the coupling parameter for which a microswimmer can have an autonomous directed motion. The stability of the phase difference is investigated both numerically and analytically in order to determine its bifurcation structure.
PACS: 47.63.Gd – Swimming microorganisms / 47.63.mf – Low-Reynolds-number motions / 05.45.Xt – Synchronization; coupled oscillators
© 2021 EPLA
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.