Hydrodynamic interactions between rotating helices

MJ Kim, TR Powers - Physical Review E—Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft …, 2004 - APS
Physical Review E—Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 2004APS
Escherichia coli bacteria use rotating helical flagella to swim. At this scale, viscous effects
dominate inertia, and there are significant hydrodynamic interactions between nearby
helices. These interactions cause the flagella to bundle during the “runs” of bacterial
chemotaxis. Here we use slender-body theory to solve for the flow fields generated by rigid
helices rotated by stationary motors. We determine how the hydrodynamic forces and
torques depend on phase and phase difference, show that rigid helices driven at constant …
Escherichia coli bacteria use rotating helical flagella to swim. At this scale, viscous effects dominate inertia, and there are significant hydrodynamic interactions between nearby helices. These interactions cause the flagella to bundle during the “runs” of bacterial chemotaxis. Here we use slender-body theory to solve for the flow fields generated by rigid helices rotated by stationary motors. We determine how the hydrodynamic forces and torques depend on phase and phase difference, show that rigid helices driven at constant torque do not synchronize, and solve for the flows. We also use symmetry arguments based on kinematic reversibility to show that for two rigid helices rotating with zero phase difference, there is no time-averaged attractive or repulsive force between the helices.
American Physical Society
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