The role of fluid flow on the behavior of swimming microorganisms
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Authors
Chilukuri, Sandeep
Issue Date
2014-08
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Thesis
Language
ENG
Keywords
Chemical and biological engineering
Alternative Title
Abstract
Swimming microorganisms have been observed to accumulate near surfaces in both experimental and computational studies. In the presence of an external flow, we observed that the accumulation of the organisms at the surfaces reduced. We found that this accumulation at the surfaces was higher when hydrodynamic interactions (HIs) between the organism and surfaces were included. To understand the distribution and dynamics of the organisms across the channel, the effect of flow on the orientations of the organisms was quantified and compared to previous work on upstream swimming of organisms and the alignment of passive rods in flow. The transport of the organisms from one surface to another was also affected by the alignment of the organisms due to the flow.
Description
August 2014
School of Engineering
School of Engineering
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY