Status reports of PRANDTL interns, Part 2
- Date: Jul 19, 2018
- Time: 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Devaditya Mohanty
- IIT Guwahanti, India
- Location: Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation (MPIDS)
- Room: SR 0.77
- Host: DCF
- Contact: guido.schriever@ds.mpg.de
"Tuning the dynamics of droplet swimmers"
Droplet swimmers are artificial microswimmers that self-propel when immersed in an aqueous surfactant solution while undergoing micellar solubilization. The droplet propulsion occurs due to a self-sustained gradient in the interfacial tension caused by an inhomogeneous surfactant coverage on the droplet surface. This gradient leads to Marangoni stresses along the interface, creating flows pushing the droplet forward. It has been shown that the swimmers leave a trail of filled micelles behind as they self-propel, and depending on the swimming time scales this can lead to different swimming behaviors.
The work presented in this talk shows that by changing the composition of the surfactant solution with a varying glycerol volume fraction, we can tune the motion from ‘run-and-spiral’ to a noisy ‘stop-and-go’. We have studied the dynamics of swimming in a Hele-shaw geometry. The hydrodynamic field measurements, by particle image velocimetry, indicates an intermittent flow generated by the droplet. Our fluorescence microscopy results suggest that this is due to the autochemotactic interactions between the swimmer and its own trail.
Droplet swimmers are artificial microswimmers that self-propel when immersed in an aqueous surfactant solution while undergoing micellar solubilization. The droplet propulsion occurs due to a self-sustained gradient in the interfacial tension caused by an inhomogeneous surfactant coverage on the droplet surface. This gradient leads to Marangoni stresses along the interface, creating flows pushing the droplet forward. It has been shown that the swimmers leave a trail of filled micelles behind as they self-propel, and depending on the swimming time scales this can lead to different swimming behaviors.
The work presented in this talk shows that by changing the composition of the surfactant solution with a varying glycerol volume fraction, we can tune the motion from ‘run-and-spiral’ to a noisy ‘stop-and-go’. We have studied the dynamics of swimming in a Hele-shaw geometry. The hydrodynamic field measurements, by particle image velocimetry, indicates an intermittent flow generated by the droplet. Our fluorescence microscopy results suggest that this is due to the autochemotactic interactions between the swimmer and its own trail.