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Enhancing transport barriers with swimming micro-organisms in chaotic flows

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2024

Ranjiangshang Ran Open the ORCID record for Ranjiangshang Ran [Opens in a new window]  and
Paulo E. Arratia Open the ORCID record for Paulo E. Arratia [Opens in a new window]
Ranjiangshang Ran
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA Department of Physics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA
Paulo E. Arratia*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: parratia@seas.upenn.edu
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Abstract

We investigate the effects of bacterial activity on the mixing and transport properties of a passive scalar in time-periodic flows in experiments and in a simple model. We focus on the interactions between swimming Escherichia coli and the Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs) of the flow, which are computed from experimentally measured velocity fields. Experiments show that such interactions are non-trivial and can lead to transport barriers through which the scalar flux is significantly reduced. Using the Poincaré map, we show that these transport barriers coincide with the outermost members of elliptic LCSs known as Lagrangian vortex boundaries. Numerical simulations further show that elliptic LCSs can repel elongated swimmers and lead to swimmer depletion within Lagrangian coherent vortices. A simple mechanism shows that such depletion is due to the preferential alignment of elongated swimmers with the tangents of elliptic LCSs. Our results provide insights into understanding the transport of micro-organisms in complex flows with dynamical topological features from a Lagrangian viewpoint.

JFM classification

Biological Fluid Dynamics: Micro-organism dynamics Complex Fluids: Active matter Nonlinear Dynamical Systems: Chaos
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 988 , 10 June 2024 , A25
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Supplementary material: File

Ran and Arratia supplementary movie 1

Stroboscopic video of dye mixing experiments, for mixing in the buffer solution (left) and a bacterial suspension of a volume fraction ϕb = 0.5% (right).
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File 3.1 MB
Supplementary material: File

Ran and Arratia supplementary movie 2

Real time video of the dye field (left column) and the TRA field (right column), for mixing in the buffer solution (top row) and a bacterial suspension of a volume fraction ϕb = 0.5% (bottom row).
Download Ran and Arratia supplementary movie 2(File)
File 6.4 MB
Supplementary material: File

Ran and Arratia supplementary movie 3

Spatial distribution of passive particles (left) and active particles (right) in numerical simulations. The particles are colored by their normalized local number density ρN/ρ0.
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File 9.7 MB
Supplementary material: File

Ran and Arratia supplementary movie 4

Stroboscopic trajectories of a passive particle (blue) and an active particle (orange) within Lagrangian vortices. The color map is the TRA field. The swimming direction of the active particle is illustrated by an arrow, while the (non-swimming) passive particle is represented as a bar.
Download Ran and Arratia supplementary movie 4(File)
File 1.1 MB
Supplementary material: File

Ran and Arratia supplementary material 5

Ran and Arratia supplementary material
Download Ran and Arratia supplementary material 5(File)
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