Sperm swimming at low Reynolds number have strong hydrodynamic interactions when their concentration is high in vivo or near substrates in vitro. The beating tails not only propel the sperm through a fluid, but also create flow fields through which sperm interact with each other. We study the hydrodynamic interaction and cooperation of sperm embedded in a two-dimensional fluid by using a partic...

The stochastic differential equations corresponding to the updating algorithm of Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD), and the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation are derived. It is shown that a slight modification to the algorithm is required before the Gibbs distribution is recovered as the stationary solution to the Fokker-Planck equation. The temperature of the system is then directly relat...

We determine the high-frequency limiting shear viscosity, eta(infinity), in colloidal suspensions of rigid, uniformly porous spheres of radius a as a function of volume fraction phi and (inverse) porosity parameter x. Our study covers the complete fluid-state regime. The flow inside the spheres is modeled by the Debye-Bueche-Brinkman equation using the boundary condition that fluid velocity and...

The mystacial vibrissae of harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) constitute a highly sensitive hydrodynamic receptor system enabling the seals to detect and follow hydrodynamic trails. In the wild, hydrodynamic trails, as generated by swimming fish, consist of cyclic burst-and-glide phases, associated with various differences in the physical parameters of the trail. Here, we investigated the impact of...

Diffusiophoresis, the motion of a particle in response to an externally imposed concentration gradient of a solute species, is analysed from both the traditional coarse-grained macroscopic (i.e. continuum) perspective and from a fine-grained micromechanical level in which the particle and the solute are treated on the same footing as Brownian particles dispersed in a solvent. It is shown that a...

The equations of hydrodynamics are nonlinear partial differential equations, so they include the possibility of forming singularities in finite time. This means that hydrodynamic fields become infinite or at least non-smooth at points, lines, or even fractal objects. This mathematical possibility is the price one has to pay for the enormous conceptual simplification a continuum theory brings fo...

Harbour seals can use their mystacial vibrissae to detect and track hydrodynamic wakes. We investigated the ability of a harbour seal to discriminate objects of different size or shape by their hydrodynamic signature and used particle image velocimetry to identify the hydrodynamic parameters that a seal may be using to do so. Hydrodynamic trails were generated by different sized or shaped paddl...

In the present work, the motion of metallic and plastic particles of 5 mm diameter falling in a quiescent fluid is investigated experimentally. The goal of this investigation is to examine the effect of history force acting on a particle in a range of Reynolds numbers between 1000 and 5000. The instantaneous position of the particle was recorded using a high - speed camera (500 to 1000 frames p...