Propulsion by a helical flagellum in a capillary tube

Propulsion by a helical flagellum in a capillary tube

Propulsion of microorganisms by a helical flagellum.

The swimming of a bacterium or a biomimetic nanobot driven by a rotating helical flagellum is often interpreted using the resistive force theory developed by Gray and Hancock and by Lighthill, but this theory has not been tested for a range of physically relevant parameters. We test resistive force theory in experiments on macroscopic swimmers in a fluid that is highly viscous so the Reynolds n...

The efficiency of propulsion by a rotating flagellum.

At very low Reynolds number, the regime in which fluid dynamics is governed by Stokes equations, a helix that translates along its axis under an external force but without an external torque will necessarily rotate. By the linearity of the Stokes equations, the same helix that is caused to rotate due to an external torque will necessarily translate. This is the physics that underlies the mechan...

Capillary droplet propulsion on a fibre.

A viscous liquid film coating a fibre becomes unstable and decays into droplets due to the Rayleigh-Plateau instability (RPI). Here, we report on the generation of uniform droplets on a hydrophobized fibre by taking advantage of this effect. In the late stages of liquid column breakup, a three-phase contact line can be formed at one side of the droplet by spontaneous rupture of the thinning fil...

Investigation on Turbulent Nanofluid Flow in Helical Tube in Tube Heat Exchangers

In this study, the thermal characteristics of turbulent nanofluid flow in a helical tube in the tube heat exchanger (HTTHE) were assessed numerically through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. The findings of both the turbulent models: realizable k-epsion (k-ε) and re-normalisation group (RNG) k-epsilon were compared. The temperature distribution contours show that realizable and RN...