Propulsion of microorganisms by a helical flagellum.

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...

Propulsion by a helical flagellum in a capillary tube

Numerical study on the propulsion of a bacterial flagellum in a viscous fluid using an immersed boundary method

0045-7930/$ see front matter Crown Copyright 2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compfluid.2012.03.012 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 51 200 7636; fax E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Kang). The propulsion of a bacterial flagellum in a viscous fluid has gained much attention in the field of biological fluid dynamics. Inspired by the bacterial propulsion, we present a three-dimensional computat...

“ Corkscrew ” vs . “ tank - treading ” propulsion of spirochetes .

Submitted for the DFD10 Meeting of The American Physical Society “Corkscrew” vs. “tank-treading” propulsion of spirochetes. ALEXANDER LESHANSKY, Department of Chemical Engineering, Technion-IIT, Haifa, Israel, ODED KENNETH, Physics Department, Technion-IIT, Haifa, Israel — We consider the potential mechanism of spirochete propulsion driven by twirling of the outer cell surface coupled to counte...

Motility of Colonial Choanoflagellates and the Statistics of Aggregate Random Walkers.

We illuminate the nature of the three-dimensional random walks of microorganisms composed of individual organisms adhered together. Such aggregate random walkers are typified by choanoflagellates, eukaryotes that are the closest living relatives of animals. In the colony-forming species Salpingoeca rosetta we show that the beating of each flagellum is stochastic and uncorrelated with others, an...