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Updated: May 30, 2026

Impacts of Free-falling Spheres on a Deep Liquid Pool with Altered Fluid and Impactor Surface Conditions
Published on: February 17, 2019
Hydrodynamics of linked sphere model swimmers
G P Alexander1, C M Pooley, J M Yeomans
1Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, 1 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3NP, UK.
Abstract:
We describe in detail the hydrodynamics of a simple model of linked sphere swimmers. We calculate the asymptotic form of both the time averaged flow field generated by a single swimmer and the interactions between swimmers in a dilute suspension, showing how each depends on the parameters describing the swimmer and its swimming stroke. We emphasize the importance of time reversal symmetry in determining the far field flow around a swimmer and show that the interactions between swimmers are highly dependent on the relative phase of their swimming strokes.
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