科研之友
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摘要
The synchronization of nearby sperm flagella as they swim in a viscous fluid was observed nearly a century ago. In the early 1950s, in an effort to shed light on this intriguing phenomenon, Taylor initiated the mathematical analysis of the fluid dynamics of microorganism motility. Since then, models have investigated sperm hydrodynamics where the flagellum is treated as a waving sheet (2D) or as a slender waving filament (3D). Here, we study the interactions of two finite length, flexible filaments confined to a plane in a 3D fluid and compare these to the interactions of the analogous pair of finite, flexible sheets in a 2D fluid. Within our computational framework using regularized Stokeslets, this comparison is easily achieved by choosing either the 2D or 3D regularized kernel to compute fluid velocities induced by the actuated structures. We find, as expected, that two flagella swimming with a symmetric beatform will synchronize (phase-lock) on a fast time scale and attract towards each other on a longer time scale in both 2D and 3D. For a symmetric beatform, synchronization occurs faster in 2D than 3D for sufficiently stiff swimmers. In 3D, a greater enhancement in efficiency and swimming velocity is observed for attracted swimmers relative to the 2D case. We also demonstrate the tendency of two asymmetrically beating filaments in a 3D fluid to align-in tandem-exhibiting an efficiency boost for the duration of their sustained alignment.
- 出版日期2015-12
