2015/01/11 by Nikhil Gupta, Nïkhil Gupta, Siddhartha Das +6
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Fluid Dynamics and Mixing #Lattice Boltzmann Simulation Studies #Particle Dynamics in Fluid Flows #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1501.02417
20 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2015/01/11 · openalex publication_date 2015/01/11 · arxiv updated 2015/01/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this paper, we obtain analytical results for shear stress distributions inside an elastic body placed in a low Reynolds number transport. The problem definition is inspired by a recent experimental study (Valiei et al., Lab Chip, 2012, 12, 5133-5137) that reports the flow-triggered deformation of bacterial biofilms, formed on cylindrical rigid microposts, into long filamentous structures known as streamers. In our analysis, we consider an elastic body of finite thickness (forming a rim) placed over a rigid cylinder, i.e., we mimic the biofilm structure in the experiment. We consider Oseen flow solution to describe the low Reynolds transport past this cylindrical elastic structure. The stress and strain distributions inside the elastic structure are found to be functions of position, Poisson ratio, initial thickness of the elastic rim and the ratio of the flow-driven shear stress to the shear modulus of the elastic body. More importantly, these analyses, which can be deemed as one of the first formal analyses to understand the fluid-structure-interaction issues associated with the biofilm streamer formation, help us interpret several qualitative aspects associated with the streamer formation reported in different experiments.