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Swimming in shear

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2014

David Saintillan
David Saintillan*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

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The complex patterns observed in experiments on suspensions of swimming cells undergoing bioconvection have fascinated biologists, physicists and mathematicians alike for over a century. Theoretical models developed over the last few decades have shown a strong similarity with Rayleigh–Bénard thermal convection, albeit with a richer dynamical behaviour due to the orientational degrees of freedom of the cells. In a recent paper, Hwang & Pedley (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 738, 2014, pp. 522–562) revisit previous models for bioconvection to investigate the effects of an external shear flow on pattern formation. In addition to casting light on new mechanisms for instability, their study demonstrates a subtle interplay between shear, swimming motions and bioconvection patterns.

JFM classification

Biological Fluid Dynamics: Bioconvection Instability: Instability Biological Fluid Dynamics: Micro-organism dynamics
Type
Focus on Fluids
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 744 , 10 April 2014 , pp. 1 - 4
Copyright
© 2014 Cambridge University Press 

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