Abstract:
Today, the field of microswimmers
covers an extremely wide panel of systems going from prokaryotic and eukaryotic
microorganisms (such as bacteria, algae, leukocytes, and so on) to artificial
microswimmers. A prototypical example of the latter is a Janus-like particle,
named after the two-faced Roman god; their motion originates from the asymmetry
of their surface properties. Here, by contrast, we focus on the
diffusiophoretic system without such an anisotropic restriction. To investigate
the dynamics of the diffusiophoretic particles, we first proposed a simple and
efficient class of direct solvers for Poisson equation in finite or infinite
domains related to spherical geometry. The solver was developed based on
truncated spherical harmonics expansion, where the differential mode equations
were solved by second-order finite difference method without handling
coordinate singularities. We then applied the solver to study the fluid flow
and solute coupled nonlinear system. Numerical experiments suggested that the
particle can achieve a spontaneous symmetry-breaking unidirectional motion at
moderate Peclet numbers, whereas the particle motion becomes chaotic in high
Peclet number regimes. The statistical analysis illustrates the
run-and-tumble-like nature at short times and diffusive nature at long times
without any source of noise. Such results show evidence that the complicated
motions may already be hidden in purely isotropic media due to the intrinsic
nonlinearities of the problem.
20200327演講_胡偉帆教授 (國立中興大學應用數學系)