TY - JOUR
T1 - Propulsion of Microorganisms by Surface Distortions
AU - Stone, Howard A.
AU - Samuel, Aravinthan D.T.
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1996/11/4
Y1 - 1996/11/4
N2 - Swimming strategies of microorganisms must conform to the principles of self-propulsion at low Reynolds numbers. Here we relate the translational and rotational speeds to the surface motions of a swimmer and, for spheres, make evident novel constraints on mechanisms for propulsion. The results are applied to a cyanobacterium, an organism whose motile mechanism is unknown, by considering incompressible streaming of the cell surface and oscillatory, tangential surface deformations. Finally, swimming efficiency using tangential motions is related to the surface velocities and a bound on the efficiency is obtained.
AB - Swimming strategies of microorganisms must conform to the principles of self-propulsion at low Reynolds numbers. Here we relate the translational and rotational speeds to the surface motions of a swimmer and, for spheres, make evident novel constraints on mechanisms for propulsion. The results are applied to a cyanobacterium, an organism whose motile mechanism is unknown, by considering incompressible streaming of the cell surface and oscillatory, tangential surface deformations. Finally, swimming efficiency using tangential motions is related to the surface velocities and a bound on the efficiency is obtained.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.77.4102
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.77.4102
M3 - Article
C2 - 10062388
AN - SCOPUS:0000973878
VL - 77
SP - 4102
EP - 4104
JO - Physical Review Letters
JF - Physical Review Letters
SN - 0031-9007
IS - 19
ER -