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Updated: Jul 7, 2026

A Rapidly Incremented Tethered-Swimming Maximal Protocol for Cardiorespiratory Assessment of Swimmers
Published on: January 28, 2020
Three-sphere low-Reynolds-number swimmer with a cargo container
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sheffield, S3 7RH, Sheffield, UK. r.golestanian@sheffield.ac.uk
Abstract:
A recently introduced model for an autonomous swimmer at low Reynolds number that is comprised of three spheres connected by two arms is considered when one of the spheres has a large radius. The Stokes hydrodynamic flow associated with the swimming strokes and net motion of this system can be studied analytically using the Stokes Green's function of a point force in front of a sphere of arbitrary radius R provided by Oseen. The swimming velocity is calculated, and shown to scale as 1/R3 with the radius of the sphere.
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