Issue 46, 2014

Hydrodynamic interaction induced spontaneous rotation of coupled active filaments

Abstract

We investigate the coupled dynamics of active filaments with long range hydrodynamic interactions (HI). Remarkably, we find that filaments can rotate spontaneously under the same conditions in which a single filament alone can only move in translation. Detailed analysis reveals that the emergence of coupled rotation originates from an asymmetric flow field associated with HI which breaks the symmetry of translational motion when filaments approach. The breaking is then further stabilized by HI to form self-sustained coupled rotation. Intensive simulations show that coupled rotation forms easily when one filament tends to collide with the front-half of the other. For head-to-tail approaching, we observe another interesting HI-induced coupled motion, where filaments move together in the form of one following the other. Moreover, the radius of coupled rotation increases exponentially as the rigidity of the filament increases, which suggests that HI are also important for the alignment of rigid-rod-like filaments which has been assumed to be solely a consequence of direct collisions.

Graphical abstract: Hydrodynamic interaction induced spontaneous rotation of coupled active filaments

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
05 Aug 2014
Accepted
03 Sep 2014
First published
05 Sep 2014

Soft Matter, 2014,10, 9248-9253

Author version available

Hydrodynamic interaction induced spontaneous rotation of coupled active filaments

H. Jiang and Z. Hou, Soft Matter, 2014, 10, 9248 DOI: 10.1039/C4SM01734J

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