A bi-directional low-Reynolds-number swimmer with passive elastic arms

Abstract

It has been recently shown that it is possible to design simple artificial swimmers at low Reynoldsnumber that possess only one degree of freedom and, nevertheless, can overcome Purcell's celebratedscallop theorem. One of the few examples is given by Montino and DeSimone, Eur. Phys. J. E, vol.38, 2015, who consider the three-sphere Swimmer of Najafi and Golestanian, replacing one active armwith a passive elastic spring. We further generalize this idea by increasing the number of springs andshow that it is possible to invert the swimming direction using the frequency of the single actuatedarm.