Preferential transport of swimmers in heterogeneous two-dimensional turbulent flow

Si, Xinyu; Fang, Lei

doi:10.1103/physrevfluids.7.094501

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…2019; Ran et al. 2021; Si & Fang 2021, 2022; Qin & Arratia 2022; Yoest et al. 2022), our work extends the study of micro-organism LCSs interaction to elliptic LCSs (i.e.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

“…2022). Simulations in chaotic flows show that elongated swimmers align with repelling LCSs of hyperbolic fixed points (Khurana & Ouellette 2012), while later numerical studies show that elongated active particles have a much stronger alignment with attracting LCSs (Si & Fang 2021, 2022), similar to passive elongated particles (Parsa et al. 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Enhancing transport barriers with swimming micro-organisms in chaotic flows

Ran,

Arratia

2024

J. Fluid Mech.

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We investigate the effects of bacterial activity on the mixing and transport properties of a passive scalar in time-periodic flows in experiments and in a simple model. We focus on the interactions between swimming Escherichia coli and the Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs) of the flow, which are computed from experimentally measured velocity fields. Experiments show that such interactions are non-trivial and can lead to transport barriers through which the scalar flux is significantly reduced. Using the Poincaré map, we show that these transport barriers coincide with the outermost members of elliptic LCSs known as Lagrangian vortex boundaries. Numerical simulations further show that elliptic LCSs can repel elongated swimmers and lead to swimmer depletion within Lagrangian coherent vortices. A simple mechanism shows that such depletion is due to the preferential alignment of elongated swimmers with the tangents of elliptic LCSs. Our results provide insights into understanding the transport of micro-organisms in complex flows with dynamical topological features from a Lagrangian viewpoint.

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“…2019; Ran et al. 2021; Si & Fang 2021, 2022; Qin & Arratia 2022; Yoest et al. 2022), our work extends the study of micro-organism LCSs interaction to elliptic LCSs (i.e.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%