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Helicoidal particles and swimmers in a flow at low Reynolds number

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2020

Kenta Ishimoto*
Affiliation:
Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto, 606-8502, Japan
*
Email address for correspondence: ishimoto@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the dynamics of a helicoidal object, which can be either a passive particle or an active swimmer, with an arbitrary shape in a linear background flow at low Reynolds number, and derive a generalized version of the Jeffery equations for the angular dynamics of the object, including a new constant from the chirality of the object as well as the Bretherton constant. The new constant appears from the inhomogeneous chirality distribution along the axis of the helicoidal symmetry, whereas the overall chirality of the object contributes to the drift velocity. Further investigations are made for an object in a simple shear flow, and it is found that the chirality effects generate non-closed trajectories of the director vector which will be stably directed parallel or anti-parallel to the background vorticity vector depending on the sign of the chirality. A bacterial swimmer is considered as an example of a helicoidal object, and we calculate the values of the constants in the generalized Jeffery equations for a typical morphology of Escherichia coli. Our results provide useful expressions for the studies of microparticles and biological fluids, and emphasize the significance of the symmetry of an object on its motion at low Reynolds number.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020
Figure 0

Figure 1. Schematic of an object with an arbitrary shape under a linear shear flow. We consider the laboratory-fixed reference frame $\{\boldsymbol{e}_{i}\}$, and the body-fixed frame $\{\hat{\boldsymbol{e}}_{i}\}$ whose origin is denoted by $\boldsymbol{x}_{0}$. The matrix $\unicode[STIX]{x1D64D}$ represents the rotation from the laboratory frame to the body-fixed frame. The vector $\boldsymbol{r}$ represents the relative position to the origin $\boldsymbol{x}_{0}$. The linear and angular velocities of the object are $\boldsymbol{U}$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D734}$, respectively. The background linear flow field is indicated by $\boldsymbol{u}^{\infty }$.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Schematics of objects with helicoidal symmetry. (a) A propeller with four symmetric blades is attached at one end of a rod. The object is symmetric in a plane including the axis of the helicoidal symmetry, and the motion is identical to that of a ‘body of revolution’. (b) An asymmetric, chiral four-bladed propeller is attached at one end of a rod. (c) Asymmetric four-bladed propellers with opposite chirality are attached at the ends of a rod. The object is symmetric in a plane perpendicular to the axis of the helicoidal symmetry. (d) Asymmetric four-bladed propellers with the same chirality are attached at the ends of a rod. The object is symmetric under a $\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}$-rotation around the axis perpendicular to the axis of the helicoidal symmetry. The same four classes of symmetry are shown for a bacterial swimmer in figure 3.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Schematics of models with helicoidal symmetry. The four symmetries are shown as in the four types of objects in figure 2. (a) A spheroidal cell body with a slender rod, which is a body of revolution with no chirality effects. (b) A spheroidal cell body with a left-handed helical flagellum. (c) A spheroidal cell body with right-handed and left-handed helical flagella. This object possesses an additional reflectional symmetry in a plane perpendicular to the axis of helicoidal symmetry, $\hat{\boldsymbol{e}}_{1}$. (d) A spheroidal cell body with two left-handed helical flagella. This object possesses an additional $\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}$-rotational symmetry around the axis perpendicular to $\hat{\boldsymbol{e}}_{1}$.

Figure 3

Figure 4. (a) Schematics of a background simple shear flow and (b) the angle variables for the director vector. (a) A simple shear is considered, $\boldsymbol{u}^{\infty }=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}y\boldsymbol{e}_{1}$, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}\geqslant 0$ is the shear strength. The background vorticity vector is then directed to the negative $\boldsymbol{e}_{3}$ axis. (b) The director dynamics are parameterized by the two angles, the polar angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}\in [0,\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}]$ measured from the $\boldsymbol{e}_{3}$ axis and the azimuthal angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}\in (-\unicode[STIX]{x03C0},\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}]$ measured from the $\boldsymbol{e}_{2}$ axis toward the $\boldsymbol{e}_{1}$ axis.

Figure 4

Figure 5. Angle dynamics from (4.5) to (4.6), where the red curves represent the streamline in the phase space. The blue arrows indicate the flow in the phase space. The parameters are (a) $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})=(0.8,0)$, (b) $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})=(0.8,0.2)$, (c) $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})=(0,0.5)$, (d$(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})=(-0.5,0.5)$, (e) $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})=(0.5,1.5)$, (f) $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})=(0,1.5)$ and (g) $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})=(1.5,0.2)$, as plotted in red circles in figure 6. (h) Time evolution of the polar angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$ for the parameters from (b,d,e,g) from three different initial polar angles $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}=\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}/4,\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}/2,3\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}/4$ and the initial azimuthal angle fixed as $\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}=0$.

Figure 5

Figure 6. The stability diagram in the $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}{-}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ plane. The black thick lines on the axes show the parameter regions, where the closed loops are obtained for the angle dynamics. The blue thick line, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}^{2}+\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}^{2}=1,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}\neq 0$, indicates the conditions where non-trivial stationary angles bifurcate from $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}=0,\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}$. The dashed green lines show the transition between the spiral and non-spiral dynamics around the non-trivial stationary angles, obtained from the linear stability analysis. The red circles and the associated alphabetical symbols show the parameters with which the angle dynamics are shown in figure 5. The dynamics with a negative $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ are identical to the change in the variable $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}\mapsto \unicode[STIX]{x03C0}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$ as readily found from (4.5) to (4.6).

Figure 6

Figure 7. Schematics of a model bacterium with a spheroidal cell body and a helical flagellum. The cell body is a rigid spheroid with semiaxes $c,a,a$, and the flagellum is a simple circular rigid helix with pitch $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}$, amplitude $b$ and length $L$. The axis of the helix is set to be the swimmer’s director vector, $\hat{\boldsymbol{e}}_{1}=\boldsymbol{d}$.

Figure 7

Figure 8. The values of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ for a model bacterium from figure 7 from the resistive force theory with various cell body aspect ratios $c$ and flagellar lengths $L$. (a) The values are plotted in the $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}{-}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ plane. The seven different values of $c$ are considered, and the values used are labelled on each curve in the plot. (b) The horizontal axis is replaced by the effective aspect ratio, $\tilde{c}$, which is obtained from the values of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$. The parameters $a=1$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}=2.5$ and $b=0.25$ are fixed. For seven different $c$, we plotted the values of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ as we increased $L$ from $0$ to $100$, and the plotted circles indicate the values with $L=0,2,\ldots ,10$, with the same colours for the same value of $L$.

Figure 8

Figure 9. Time evolution of the polar angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$ with different initial values of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{init}=0.1\unicode[STIX]{x03C0},0.2\unicode[STIX]{x03C0},\ldots ,0.9\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}$ against time normalized by the period of the Jeffery orbit $T$. The values of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ are $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})=(0.9,0.005)$, corresponding to values for a typical bacterial cell as obtained from the calculation in figure 8.