Complex/Dynamical Systems Seminar: Saverio Spagnolie
Suspensions of active particles in fluids exhibit incredibly rich behavior, from organization on length scales much longer than the individual particle size to mixing flows and negative viscosities. We will discuss the dynamics of hydrodynamically interacting motile and non-motile stress-generating swimmers or particles as they invade a surrounding viscous fluid, modeled by coupled partial differential equations for particle motions and viscous fluid flow. Depending on the nature of their self-propulsion, colonies of swimmers can either exhibit a dramatic splay, or instead a cascade of transverse concentration instabilities, governed at small times by an equation which also describes the Saffman-Taylor instability in a Hele-Shaw cell, or Rayleigh-Taylor instability in two-dimensional flow through a porous medium. Analysis of concentrated distributions of particles matches the results of our full numerical simulations. Along the way we will prove a very surprising "no-flow theorem": particle distributions initially isotropic in orientation lose isotropy immediately but in such a way that results in no fluid flow anywhere and at any time.