TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hu, Jinglei
AU  - Yang, Mingcheng
AU  - Gompper, Gerhard
AU  - Winkler, Roland G.
TI  - Modelling the mechanics and hydrodynamics of swimming E. coli
JO  - Soft matter
VL  - 11
IS  - 40
SN  - 1744-6848
CY  - London
PB  - Royal Soc. of Chemistry
M1  - FZJ-2015-07699
SP  - 7867 - 7876
PY  - 2015
AB  - The swimming properties of an E. coli-type model bacterium are investigated by mesoscale hydrodynamic simulations, combining molecular dynamics simulations of the bacterium with the multiparticle particle collision dynamics method for the embedding fluid. The bacterium is composed of a spherocylindrical body with attached helical flagella, built up from discrete particles for an efficient coupling with the fluid. We measure the hydrodynamic friction coefficients of the bacterium and find quantitative agreement with experimental results of swimming E. coli. The flow field of the bacterium shows a force-dipole-like pattern in the swimming plane and two vortices perpendicular to its swimming direction arising from counterrotation of the cell body and the flagella. By comparison with the flow field of a force dipole and rotlet dipole, we extract the force-dipole and rotlet-dipole strengths for the bacterium and find that counterrotation of the cell body and the flagella is essential for describing the near-field hydrodynamics of the bacterium.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000363204400003
C6  - pmid:26256240
DO  - DOI:10.1039/C5SM01678A
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/279820
ER  -