The Skyrme effective interaction, with its multitude of parameterisations, along with its implementation using the static and time-dependent density functional (TDHF) formalism have allowed for a range of microscopic calculations of low-energy heavy-ion collisions. These calculations allow variation of the effective interaction along with an interpretation of the results of this variation informed by a comparison to experimental data. Initial progress in implementing TDHF for heavy-ion collisions necessarily used many approximations in the geometry or the interaction. Over the last decade or so, the implementations have overcome all restrictions, and studies have begun to be made where details of the effective interaction are being probed. This review surveys these studies in low energy heavy-ion reactions, finding significant effects on observables from the form of the spin-orbit interaction, the use of the tensor force, and the inclusion of time-odd terms in the density functional.Heavy-ion collisions combine the rich dynamics of a many-body out-of-equilibrium open quantum system with the complexities of the residual part of the strong interaction which leaks out of the small, but neither fundamental or point-like, nucleons, causing them to stick loosely together some of the time, and to fall apart at others. Understanding heavy-ion reactions across all energy scales is necessary to understand stellar nucleosynthesis [1], the synthesis of superheavy nuclei [2,3], the properties of nuclear matter [4][5][6], the QCD phase diagram [7,8] as well as the understanding of reaction mechanisms themselves [9][10][11][12][13].Among the theoretical techniques used to study heavy-ion reactions, methods based on timedependent Hartree-Fock have recently achieved the status of having sufficiently mature implementations free of limiting approximations, and running at a suitable speed, such that systematically varying the effective interaction in the calculations is possible. It is such studies that form the main subject of the present review. The practical implementations, using the Skyrme interaction, are in some sense parameter-free, in that one has a framework using an effective interaction fitted to ground state data and nuclear matter properties, with no further adjustment to dynamics. Structure and reaction effects are together determined self-consistently from the interaction, subject to the approximations of the mean-field and one gives no further adjustment. In another sense, the variation among the sets of available effective interactions are parameters of the calculations. We attempt to summarise here what has been learnt from exploring different Skyrme force parameterisations within low-energy heavy-ion reaction calculations.Overlapping this subject area are other recent review articles, to which the reader is referred: A review in which extensive coverage of theoretical approaches to dynamics of heavy-ion collisions in TDHF and its extensions is presented by Simenel and Umar [14]. This review extensively covers the...