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The use of machine learning techniques in the development of microscopic swimmers has drawn considerable attention in recent years. In particular, reinforcement learning has been shown useful in enabling swimmers to learn effective propulsion strategies through its interactions with the surroundings. In this work, we apply a reinforcement learning approach to identify swimming gaits of a multi-link model swimmer. The swimmer consists of multiple rigid links connected serially with hinges, which can rotate freely to change the relative angles between neighboring links. Purcell [“Life at low Reynolds number,” Am. J. Phys. 45, 3 (1977)] demonstrated how the particular case of a three-link swimmer (now known as Purcell's swimmer) can perform a prescribed sequence of hinge rotation to generate self-propulsion in the absence of inertia. Here, without relying on any prior knowledge of low-Reynolds-number locomotion, we first demonstrate the use of reinforcement learning in identifying the classical swimming gaits of Purcell's swimmer for case of three links. We next examine the new swimming gaits acquired by the learning process as the number of links increases. We also consider the scenarios when only a single hinge is allowed to rotate at a time and when simultaneous rotation of multiple hinges is allowed. We contrast the difference in the locomotory gaits learned by the swimmers in these scenarios and discuss their propulsion performance. Taken together, our results demonstrate how a simple reinforcement learning technique can be applied to identify both classical and new swimming gaits at low Reynolds numbers. 

The effects of viscoelasticity have been shown to manifest themselves via symmetry breaking. In this investigation, we show a novel phenomenon that arises from this idea. We observe that when a dense sphere is rotated near a wall (the rotation being aligned with the wall-normal direction and gravity), it levitates to a fixed distance away from the wall. Since the shear is larger in the gap (between the sphere and the wall) than in the open side of the sphere, the shear-induced elastic stresses are thus asymmetric, resulting in a net elastic vertical force that balances the weight of the sphere. We conduct experiments, theoretical models and numerical simulations for rotating spheres of various sizes and densities in a Boger-type fluid. In the small-Deborah-number range, the results are collapsed into a universal trend by considering a dimensionless group of the ratio of elastic to gravitational forces. 

Automated manipulation of small particles using external (e.g., magnetic, electric and acoustic) fields has been an emerging technique widely used in different areas. The manipulation typically necessitates a reduced‐order physical model characterizing the field‐driven motion of particles in a complex environment. Such models are available only for highly idealized settings but are absent for a general scenario of particle manipulation typically involving complex nonlinear processes, which has limited its application. In this work, the authors present a data‐driven architecture for controlling particles in microfluidics based on hydrodynamic manipulation. The architecture replaces the difficult‐to‐derive model by a generally trainable artificial neural network to describe the kinematics of particles, and subsequently identifies the optimal operations to manipulate particles. The authors successfully demonstrate a diverse set of particle manipulations in a numerically emulated microfluidic chamber, including targeted assembly of particles and subsequent navigation of the assembled cluster, simultaneous path planning for multiple particles, and steering one particle through obstacles. The approach achieves both spatial and temporal controllability of high precision for these settings. This achievement revolutionizes automated particle manipulation, showing the potential of data‐driven approaches and machine learning in improving microfluidic technologies for enhanced flexibility and intelligence.

 

In the limit of zero Reynolds number (Re), swimmers propel themselves exploiting a series of nonreciprocal body motions. For an artificial swimmer, a proper selection of the power source is required to drive its motion, in cooperation with its geometric and mechanical properties. Although various external fields (magnetic, acoustic, optical, etc.) have been introduced, electric fields are rarely utilized to actuate such swimmers experimentally in unbounded space. Here we use uniform and static electric fields to demonstrate locomotion of a biflagellated sphere at low Re via Quincke rotation. These Quincke swimmers exhibit three different forms of motion, including a self-oscillatory state due to elastohydrodynamic–electrohydrodynamic interactions. Each form of motion follows a distinct trajectory in space. Our experiments and numerical results demonstrate a method to generate, and potentially control, the locomotion of artificial flagellated swimmers.

 

Some micro-organisms and artificial micro-swimmers propel at low Reynolds numbers (Re) via the interaction of their flexible appendages with the surrounding fluid. While their locomotion has been extensively studied with a Newtonian fluid assumption, in realistic biological environments these micro-swimmers invariably encounter rheologically complex fluids. In particular, many biological fluids such as blood and different types of mucus have shear-thinning viscosities. The influence of this ubiquitous non-Newtonian rheology on the performance of flexible swimmers remains largely unknown. Here, we present a first study to examine how shear-thinning rheology alters the fluid-structure interaction and hence the propulsion performance of elastic swimmers at low Re. Via a simple elastic swimmer actuated magnetically, we demonstrate that shear-thinning rheology can either enhance or hinder elastohydrodynamic propulsion, depending on the intricate interplay between elastic and viscous forces as well as the magnetic actuation. We also use a reduced-order model to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the enhanced and hindered propulsion observed in different physical regimes. These results and improved understanding could guide the design of flexible micro-swimmers in non-Newtonian fluids. 

We study bubble motion in a vertical capillary tube under an external flow. Bretherton ( J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 10, issue 2, 1961, pp. 166–188) has shown that, without external flow, a bubble can spontaneously rise when the Bond number ( ${Bo} \equiv \rho g R^2 / \gamma$ ) is above the critical value ${Bo}_{cr}=0.842$ , where $\rho$ is the liquid density, $g$ the gravitational acceleration, $R$ the tube radius and $\gamma$ the surface tension. It was then shown by Magnini et al. ( Phys. Rev. Fluids , vol. 4, issue 2, 2019, 023601) that the presence of an imposed liquid flow, in the same (upward) direction as buoyancy, accelerates the bubble and thickens the liquid film around it. In this work we carry out a systematic study of the bubble motion under a wide range of upward and downward external flows, focusing on the inertialess regime with Bond numbers above the critical value. We show that a rich variety of bubble dynamics occurs when an external downward flow is applied, opposing the buoyancy-driven rise of the bubble. We reveal the existence of a critical capillary number of the external downward flow ( ${Ca}_l \equiv \mu U_l/\gamma$ , where $\mu$ is the fluid viscosity and $U_l$ is the mean liquid speed) at which the bubble arrests and changes its translational direction. Depending on the relative direction of gravity and the external flow, the thickness of the film separating the bubble surface and the tube inner wall follows two distinct solution branches. The results from theory, experiments and numerical simulations confirm the existence of the two solution branches and reveal that the two branches overlap over a finite range of ${Ca}_l$ , thus suggesting non-unique, history-dependent solutions for the steady-state film thickness under the same external flow conditions. Furthermore, inertialess symmetry-breaking shape profiles at steady state are found as the bubble transits near the tipping points of the solution branches, which are shown in both experiments and three-dimensional numerical simulations.