MICROENVS · Microswimmer Environments: Modelling, Control and Tailoring""

Microswimmer Environments: Modelling, Control and Tailoring

MICROENVS aims at building a theoretical understanding of the interactions between microscopic swimmers and complex environments, including the modelling of swimmmers of different swimming gaits and their interaction with passive objects, such as filaments and elastic boundaries. Main results: We have developed a hydroynamic model of a low-Reynolds number swimmer that describes circular trajectories, which can serve as a template for artificial microrobots that perform transport and pumping tasks. We have derived an analytical and numerical model to describe the interaction of model dipolar swimmers, suchas flagelates and ciliated algae, with rigid and elastic boundaries. Our results shed light on the way that the swimmer motility is affected under confinement. We have developed a simple scaling theory, backed by simulations, to understand the motion of polymer chains under confinement. Our results are potentially useful to understand polymeric transport in micrometric and nanometirc constrictions and is the first step towards an extension to active systems. We have developed a theory that underpins the effect of rigid confinement in the motility of two different kinds of swimmers, which can be used to develop rectification devices that sort swimmers according to their swimming gait. We have developed a CUDA numerical algorithm, suitable to run on graphics processing units (GPU's), to model the dynamics of multi-particle in suspension. These include the collective motion of swimmers, and their interaction with extended objects. Future research scope: The follow-ups of this project will consist mainly of using the numerical algorithm developed to study the dynamics of many swimmers in confinement, as well as their interaction with polymer bushes. Academic and industrial impact: The impact of our results will reach first the scientific community, through three peer-reviewd publications reporting our main results, which can encourage further studies of the interaction of swimmers with complex environments. We hope that an experimental exploitation of our main results can lead to the design and test of micro robots and rectification devices.

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