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Swimming microorganisms switch between locomotory gaits to enable complex navigation strategies such as run-and-tumble to explore their environments and search for specific targets. This ability of targeted navigation via adaptive gait-switching is particularly desirable for the development of smart artificial microswimmers that can perform complex biomedical tasks such as targeted drug delivery and microsurgery in an autonomous manner. Here we use a deep reinforcement learning approach to enable a model microswimmer to self-learn effective locomotory gaits for translation, rotation and combined motions. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered swimmer can switch between various locomotory gaits adaptively to navigate towards target locations. The multimodal navigation strategy is reminiscent of gait-switching behaviors adopted by swimming microorganisms. We show that the strategy advised by AI is robust to flow perturbations and versatile in enabling the swimmer to perform complex tasks such as path tracing without being explicitly programmed. Taken together, our results demonstrate the vast potential of these AI-powered swimmers for applications in unpredictable, complex fluid environments. Biomedical applications of artificial microswimmers rely on efficient navigation strategies within complex and unpredictable fluid environments. Here, the authors use artificial intelligence to model and design microswimmers that are capable of self-learning efficient navigation strategies by adaptively switching between different locomotory gaits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particle–wall interactions have broad biological and technological applications. In particular, some artificial microswimmers capitalize on their translation–rotation coupling near a wall to generate directed propulsion. Emerging biomedical applications of these microswimmers in complex biological fluids prompt questions on the impact of non-Newtonian rheology on their propulsion. In this work, we report some intriguing effects of shear-thinning rheology, a ubiquitous non-Newtonian behaviour of biological fluids, on the translation–rotation coupling of a particle near a wall. One particularly interesting feature revealed here is that the wall-induced translation by rotation can occur in a direction opposite to what might be intuitively expected for an object rolling on a solid substrate. We elucidate the underlying physical mechanism and discuss its implications on the design of micromachines and bacterial motion near walls in complex fluids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing interest in the development of artificial microscopic machines that can perform complex maneuvers like swimming microorganisms for potential biomedical applications. At the microscopic scales, the dominance of viscous over inertial forces imposes stringent constraints on locomotion. In the absence of inertia, Purcell first proposed an elegant way to generate net translation using kinematically irreversible motions [E. M. Purcell, "Life at low Reynolds number," Am. J. Phys. 45, 3–11 (1977)]. In addition to net translation, a more recent prototype known as Purcell's "rotator" has been proposed in Dreyfus et al. ["Purcell's "rotator": Mechanical rotation at low Reynolds number," Eur. Phys. J. B 47, 161–164 (2005)] as a mechanical implementation of net rotation at low Reynolds numbers. These ingenious designs rely on knowledge of the surrounding environment and the physics of locomotion within the environment, which may be incomplete or unclear in more complex scenarios. More recently, reinforcement learning has been used as an alternative approach to enable a machine to learn effective locomotory gaits for net translation based on its interaction with the surroundings. In this work, we demonstrate the use of reinforcement learning to generate net mechanical rotation at low Reynolds numbers without requiring prior knowledge of locomotion. For a three-sphere configuration, the reinforcement learning recovers the strategy proposed by Dreyfus et al. As the number of spheres increases, multiple effective rotational strategies emerge from the learning process. However, given sufficiently long learning processes, all machines considered in this work converge to a single type of rotational policies that consist of traveling waves of actuation, suggesting its optimality of the strategy in generating net rotation at low Reynolds numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fluctuating position of an optically trapped cilium tip under untreated and Taxol-treated conditions was used to characterize mechanical properties of the cilium axoneme and its basal body by combining experimental, analytical, and computational tools. We provide, for the first time, evidence that the persistence length of a ciliary axoneme is length-dependent; longer cilia are stiffer than shorter cilia. We demonstrate that this apparent length dependence can be understood by a combination of modeling axonemal microtubules as anisotropic elastic shells and including actomyosin-driven stochastic basal body motion. Our results also demonstrate the possibility of using observable ciliary dynamics to probe interior cytoskeletal dynamics. It is hoped that our improved characterization of cilia will result in deeper understanding of the biological function of cellular flow sensing by this organelle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Taylor--Melcher (TM) model is the standard model for describing the dynamics of poorly conducting leaky dielectric fluids under an electric field. The TM model treats the fluids as ohmic conductors, without modelling the underlying ion dynamics. On the other hand, electrodiffusion models, which have been successful in describing electrokinetic phenomena, incorporate ionic concentration dynamics. Mathematical reconciliation of the electrodiffusion picture and the TM model has been a major issue for electrohydrodynamic theory. Here, we derive the TM model from an electrodiffusion model in which we explicitly model the electrochemistry of ion dissociation. We introduce salt dissociation reaction terms in the bulk electrodiffusion equations and take the limit in which the salt dissociation is weak; the assumption of weak dissociation corresponds to the fact that the TM model describes poor conductors. Together with the assumption that the Debye length is small, we derive the TM model with or without the surface charge convection term depending upon the scaling of relevant dimensionless parameters. An important quantity that emerges is the Galvani potential (GP), the jump in voltage across the liquid--liquid interface between the two leaky dielectric media; the GP arises as a natural consequence of the interfacial boundary conditions for the ionic concentrations, and is absent under certain parametric conditions. When the GP is absent, we recover the TM model. Our analysis also reveals the structure of the Debye layer at the liquid--liquid interface, which suggests how interfacial singularities may arise under strong imposed electric fields. In the presence of a non-zero GP, our model predicts that the liquid droplet will drift under an imposed electric field, the velocity of which is computed explicitly to leading order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multiscale continuum model is constructed for a mechanosensitive (MS) channel gated by tension in a lipid bilayer membrane under stresses due to fluid flows. We illustrate that for typical physiological conditions vesicle hydrodynamics driven by a fluid flow may render the membrane tension sufficiently large to gate a MS channel open. In particular, we focus on the dynamic opening/ closing of a MS channel in a vesicle membrane under a planar shear flow and a pressure-driven flow across a constriction channel. Our modeling and numerical simulation results quantify the critical flow strength or flow channel geometry for intracellular transport through a MS channel. In particular, we determine the percentage of MS channels that are open or closed as a function of the relevant measure of flow strength. The modeling and simulation results imply that for fluid flows that are physiologically relevant and realizable in microfluidic configurations stress-induced intracellular transport across the lipid membrane can be achieved by the gating of reconstituted MS channels, which can be useful for designing drug delivery in medical therapy and understanding complicated mechanotransduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrohydrodynamic instability of a leaky (weakly conducting) capacitive elastic membrane driven by a direct current electric field, both perpendicular and parallel to the membrane in a micro-fluidic channel, is investigated theoretically. In the leaky dielectric framework, electric charges can accumulate on either side of the membrane, and the effect of the accumulated surface charge depends on the ratio of charge relaxation time in the bulk to the membrane charging time. Under a parallel electric field, a non-conducting membrane can become unstable while under a perpendicular electric field a non-conducting capacitive membrane is always stable and membrane conductance is essential for the membrane instability. The effects of membrane conductance, bending modulus, and charge relaxation time on the membrane instability are elucidated for several combinations of conductivity ratio and permittivity ratio in the bulk fluids. Regions of instability are computed for both the parallel and perpendicular electric fields. The tangential electric field acts similarly to the membrane tension in terms of its damping effects at small length scales (high wave number), while either bending or membrane tension is needed to damp out the small-scale perturbations under a perpendicular electric field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We theoretically investigate the deformation of a viscous drop covered with non-diffusing insoluble surfactant under a uniform DC electric field. At equilibrium, surfactant immobilizes the spheroidal drop surface and completely suppresses the fluid flow. In this work we focus on the equilibrium electro-deformation of a surfactant-laden drop in the leaky dielectric framework by developing (1) a second-order small-deformation analysis and (2) a spheroidal model for a highly deformed (prolate or oblate) drop. Both models are compared against experimental data and numerical simulation results in the literature. Our analysis shows how the existence of equilibrium spheroidal drop depends on the permittivity ratio, conductivity ratio, surfactant coverage, and the elasticity number. Furthermore, the spheroidal model highlights that differences between surfactant effects, such as tip stretching and surface dilution effects, are greatly amplified at large surfactant coverage and high electric capillary number. These surfactant effects are well captured in the spheroidal model, but cannot be described in the second-order small-deformation theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the motion and deformation of a liquid capsule enclosed by a surface-incompressible membrane as a model of red blood cell dynamics in shear flow. Considering a slightly ellipsoidal initial shape, an analytical solution to the creeping-flow equations is obtained as a regular perturbation expansion in the excess area. The analysis takes into account the membrane fluidity, area-incompressibility and resistance to bending. The theory captures the observed transition from tumbling to swinging as the shear rate increases and clarifies the effect of capsule deformability. Near the transition, intermittent behaviour (swinging periodically interrupted by a tumble) is found only if the capsule deforms in the shear plane and does not undergo stretching or compression along the vorticity direction; the intermittency disappears if deformation along the vorticity direction occurs, i.e. if the capsule ‘breathes’. We report the phase diagram of capsule motions as a function of viscosity ratio, non-sphericity and dimensionless shear rate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a previous study [M. Hameed et al., J. Fluid Mech. 594, 307 (2008)] the authors investigated the influence of insoluble surfactant on the evolution of a stretched, inviscid bubble surrounded by a viscous fluid via direct numerical simulation of the Navier–Stokes equations, and showed that the presence of surfactant can cause the bubble to contract and form a quasisteady slender thread connecting parent bubbles, instead of proceeding directly toward pinch-off as occurs for a surfactant-free bubble. Insoluble surfactant significantly retards pinch-off and the thread is stabilized by a balance between internal pressure and reduced capillary pressure due to a high concentration of surfactant that develops during the initial stage of contraction. In the present study we investigate the influence of surfactant solubility on thread formation. The adsorption-desorption kinetics for solubility is in the diffusion controlled regime. A long-wave model for the evolution of a capillary jet is also studied in the Stokes flow limit, and shows dynamics that are similar to those of the evolving bubble. With soluble surfactant, depending on parameter values, a slender thread forms but can pinch-off later due to exchange of surfactant between the interface and exterior bulk flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effect of surface tension on the incompressible Rayleigh–Taylor instability. We modify Goncharov's local analysis [1] to consider the surface tension effect on the Rayleigh–Taylor bubble velocity. The surface tension damps the linear instability and reduces the nonlinear terminal bubble velocity. We summarize the development of a finite-volume, particle-level-set, two-phase flow solver with an adaptive Cartesian mesh, and results from convergence and validation studies of this two-phase flow solver are provided. We use this code to simulate the single-mode, viscous Rayleigh–Taylor instability with surface tension, and good agreement in terminal bubble velocity is found when compared with analytic results. We also simulate the immiscible Rayleigh–Taylor instability with random initial perturbations. The ensuing mixing flow is characterized by the effective mixing rate and the flow anisotropy. Surface tension tends to reduce the effective mixing rate and homogenizes the Rayleigh–Taylor mixing flow. Finally, we provide a scaling argument for detecting the onset of the quadratic, self-similar Rayleigh–Taylor growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]