2015/01/31 by K. Gustavsson, F. Berglund, P. R. Jonsson +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.flu-dyn #cond-mat.soft #nlin.PS
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.116.108104
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 108104 (2016) · 5 pages, 2 figures, supplemental material, as published
arxiv created 2016/05/29 · arxiv updated 2016/05/31
Recent studies show that spherical motile micro-organisms in turbulence subject to gravitational torques gather in down-welling regions of the turbulent flow. By analysing a statistical model we analytically compute how shape affects the dynamics, preferential sampling, and small-scale spatial clustering. We find that oblong organisms may spend more time in up-welling regions of the flow, and that all organisms are biased to regions of positive fluid-velocity gradients in the upward direction. We analyse small-scale spatial clustering and find that oblong particles may either cluster more or less than spherical ones, depending on the strength of the gravitational torques.