Transverse transport of microswimmers in oscillatory channel flows

Abstract

Motile microorganisms inhabit oscillatory flows encountered in physiological and engineering systems, yet the influence of flow unsteadiness on their shear-induced preferential concentration remains less understood. We investigate transverse transport of elongated microswimmers in oscillatory pressure-driven channel flow using complementary Langevin simulations and two- and one-dimensional Fokker-Planck models. Agreement between particle-based and continuum descriptions across governing parameters establishes the fidelity of the Fokker-Planck formulation for swimmer transport in oscillatory shear flows. Our analysis demonstrates that oscillatory forcing fundamentally modifies classical steady-flow shear-trapping. We find that increasing Womersley number $Wo$ reduces centerline depletion by confining oscillatory shear to thinner near-wall regions. In contrast, increasing frequency ratio $β$, of swimmer rotational diffusion rate and flow oscillation frequency, promotes sustained orientational anisotropy, and leads to a saturating increase in centerline depletion. In the weak-swimming limit, we derive a hierarchy of coupled orientational moments, enabling analytical solutions at arbitrary temporal harmonic order. The asymptotic solutions establish a universal transfer law showing that, for a given swimmer shape, the normalized leading-order orientational response depends solely on $β$. Reconstruction of the orientational distribution yields closed-form expressions for the swimmer concentration profile and depletion index, $I_D$. Our asymptotic solution recovers the steady-flow weak-shear scaling of $I_D$ with flow Peclet number, $Pe_f$, of $I_D \propto Pe_f^2$, and reveals that oscillatory forcing attenuates this response by a factor $16β^2/(1+16β^2)$. These results provide a theoretical framework to predict transverse transport of microswimmers in oscillatory channel flows.