Efficient swimming of an assembly of rigid spheres at low Reynolds number

Abstract

The swimming of an assembly of rigid spheres immersed in a viscous fluid of infinite extent is studied in low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The instantaneous swimming velocity and rate of dissipation are expressed in terms of the time-dependent displacements of sphere centers about their collective motion. For small amplitude swimming with periodically oscillating displacements, optimization of the mean swimming speed at given mean power leads to an eigenvalue problem involving a velocity matrix and a power matrix. The corresponding optimal stroke permits generalization to large amplitude motion in a model of spheres with harmonic interactions and corresponding actuating forces. The method allows straightforward calculation of the swimming performance of structures modeled as assemblies of interacting rigid spheres. A model of three collinear spheres with motion along the common axis is studied as an example.