We investigate the dynamics of a magnetoelastic robot with a dipolar magnetic head and a slender elastic body as it performs undulatory strokes and burrows through water-saturated granular beds. The robot is actuated by an oscillating magnetic field and moves forward when the stroke amplitude increases above a critical threshold. By visualizing the medium, we show that the undulating body fluidizes the bed, resulting in the appearance of a dynamic burrow, which rapidly closes in behind the moving robot as the medium loses energy. We investigate the applicability of Lighthill's elongated body theory of fish locomotion, and estimate the contribution of thrust generated by the undulating body and the drag incorporating the granular volume fraction-dependent effective viscosity of the medium. The projected speeds are found to be consistent with the measured speeds over a range of frequencies and amplitudes above the onset of forward motion. However, systematic deviations are found to grow with increasing driving, pointing to a need for further sophisticated modeling of the medium-structure interactions.
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Burrowing dynamics of aquatic worms in soft sediments
We investigate the dynamics of Lumbriculus variegatus in water-saturated sediment beds to understand limbless locomotion in the benthic zone found at the bottom of lakes and oceans. These slender aquatic worms are observed to perform elongation–contraction and transverse undulatory strokes in both water-saturated sediments and water. Greater drag anisotropy in the sediment medium is observed to boost the burrowing speed of the worm compared to swimming in water with the same stroke using drag-assisted propulsion. We capture the observed speeds by combining the calculated forms based on resistive-force theory of undulatory motion in viscous fluids and a dynamic anchor model of peristaltic motion in the sediments. Peristalsis is found to be effective for burrowing in noncohesive sediments which fill in rapidly behind the moving body inside the sediment bed. Whereas the undulatory stroke is found to be effective in water and in shallow sediment layers where anchoring is not possible to achieve peristaltic motion. We show that such dual strokes occur as well in the earthworm Eisenia fetida which inhabits moist sediments that are prone to flooding. Our analysis in terms of the rheology of the medium shows that the dual strokes are exploited by organisms to negotiate sediment beds that may be packed heterogeneously and can be used by active intruders to move effectively from a fluid through the loose bed surface layer which fluidizes easily to the well-consolidated bed below.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1805398
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10149094
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 116
- Issue:
- 51
- ISSN:
- 0027-8424
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 25569 to 25574
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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We investigate the escape dynamics of oligochaeta Lumbriculus variegatus by confining them to a quasi-2D circular chamber with a narrow exit passage. The worms move by performing undulatory and peristaltic strokes and use their head to actively probe their surroundings. We show that the worms follow the chamber boundary with occasional reversals in direction and with velocities determined by the orientation angle of the body with respect to the boundary. The average time needed to reach the passage decreases with its width before approaching a constant, consistent with a boundary-following search strategy. We model the search dynamics as a persistent random walk along the boundary and demonstrate that the head increasingly skips over the passage entrance for smaller passage widths due to body undulations. The simulations capture the observed exponential time-distributions taken to reach the exit and their mean as a function of width when starting from random locations. Even after the head penetrates the passage entrance, we find that the worm does not always escape because the head withdraws rhythmically back into the chamber over distances set by the dual stroke amplitudes. Our study highlights the importance of boundary following and body strokes in determining how active matter escapes from enclosed spaces.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911317116
