2025/02/25 by Ganesh, Akash, Carine Douarche, Douarche, Carine +2 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Bacterial biofilms and quorum sensing #FOS: Physical sciences #Lattice Boltzmann Simulation Studies #Micro and Nano Robotics #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2503.09608
openalex publication_date 2025/02/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Adding swimming bacteria to a liquid causes its effective shear viscosity to decrease, eventually reaching a regime of zero viscosity. We examined whether this property leads to viscous finger-like displacement fronts like those observed when a less viscous fluid displaces a more viscous liquid. Our study revealed that this system exhibits more complex dynamic characteristics than the classical Saffman-Taylor instability. We discovered that this instability occurs when the bacterial volume fraction exceeds a critical value, and the imposed shear rate is below critical value, for which the viscosity of the suspension is zero.