2024/07/24 by Loek van Steijn, van Steijn, Loek, Mohammad Fazelzadeh +3 · 1 citation
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · #Cephalopods and Marine Biology #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Micro and Nano Robotics #Photoreceptor and optogenetics research #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2407.17602
openalex publication_date 2024/07/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We explore the impact of hydrodynamic interactions on the conformational and dynamical properties of wet tangentially-driven active polymers using multiparticle collision dynamics simulations. By analyzing active filaments with varying degrees of flexibility, we find that fluid-mediated interactions significantly influence both their conformation and dynamics. These interactions cause polymer conformations to shrink relative to their dry counterparts, especially for semiflexible polymers at high activity levels, where the average size of wet chains becomes nearly three times smaller, due to local buckling of wet polymers. This hydrodynamic-induced shrinkage is a hallmark of active polymers, as fluid-mediated interactions do not affect conformational properties of passive polymers. Furthermore, for tangentially-driven polymers where activity and conformation are coupled, hydrodynamic interactions significantly enhance the orientational and translational dynamics compared to their dry counterparts.