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  4. Swimming with a cage: low-Reynolds-number locomotion inside a droplet
 
research article

Swimming with a cage: low-Reynolds-number locomotion inside a droplet

Reigh, Shang Yik
•
Zhu, Lailai  
•
Gallaire, Francois  
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2017
Soft Matter

Inspired by recent experiments using synthetic microswimmers to manipulate droplets, we investigate the low-Reynolds-number locomotion of a model swimmer (a spherical squirmer) encapsulated inside a droplet of a comparable size in another viscous fluid. Meditated solely by hydrodynamic interactions, the encaged swimmer is seen to be able to propel the droplet, and in some situations both remain in a stable co-swimming state. The problem is tackled using both an exact analytical theory and a numerical implementation based on a boundary element method, with a particular focus on the kinematics of the co-moving swimmer and the droplet in a concentric configuration, and we obtain excellent quantitative agreement between the two. The droplet always moves slower than a swimmer which uses purely tangential surface actuation but when it uses a particular combination of tangential and normal actuations, the squirmer and droplet are able to attain the same velocity and stay concentric for all times. We next employ numerical simulations to examine the stability of their concentric co-movement, and highlight several stability scenarios depending on the particular gait adopted by the swimmer. Furthermore, we show that the droplet reverses the nature of the far-field flow induced by the swimmer: a droplet cage turns a pusher swimmer into a puller, and vice versa. Our work sheds light on the potential development of droplets as self-contained carriers of both chemical content and self-propelled devices for controllable and precise drug deliveries.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1039/c6sm01636g
Web of Science ID

WOS:000400876600011

Author(s)
Reigh, Shang Yik
Zhu, Lailai  
Gallaire, Francois  
Lauga, Eric
Date Issued

2017

Publisher

Royal Society of Chemistry

Published in
Soft Matter
Volume

13

Issue

17

Start page

3161

End page

3173

Subjects

Low-Reynolds-number locomotion

•

squirming

•

hydrodynamic interaction

•

droplet-based cell encapsulation

•

boundary element method

Note

SY. Reigh and L. Zhu contributed equally to this work.

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LFMI  
Available on Infoscience
May 30, 2017
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/137879
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