TY  - JOUR
AU  - Sukhov, Alexander
AU  - Ziegler, Sebastian
AU  - Xie, Qingguang
AU  - Trosman, Oleg
AU  - Pande, Jayant
AU  - Grosjean, Galien
AU  - Hubert, Maxime
AU  - Vandewalle, Nicolas
AU  - Smith, Ana-Sunčana
AU  - Harting, Jens
TI  - Optimal motion of triangular magnetocapillary swimmers
JO  - The journal of chemical physics
VL  - 151
IS  - 12
SN  - 1089-7690
CY  - Melville, NY
PB  - American Institute of Physics
M1  - FZJ-2019-05012
SP  - 124707 -
PY  - 2019
AB  - A system of ferromagnetic particles trapped at a liquid-liquid interface and subjected to a set of magnetic fields (magnetocapillary swimmers) is studied numerically using a hybrid method combining the pseudopotential lattice Boltzmann method and the discrete element method. After investigating the equilibrium properties of a single, two, and three particles at the interface, we demonstrate a controlled motion of the swimmer formed by three particles. It shows a sharp dependence of the average center-of-mass speed on the frequency of the time-dependent external magnetic field. Inspired by experiments on magnetocapillary microswimmers, we interpret the obtained maxima of the swimmer speed by the optimal frequency centered around the characteristic relaxation time of a spherical particle. It is also shown that the frequency corresponding to the maximum speed grows and the maximum average speed decreases with increasing interparticle distances at moderate swimmer sizes. The findings of our lattice Boltzmann simulations are supported by bead-spring model calculations
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:31575188
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000488830300051
DO  - DOI:10.1063/1.5116860
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/865670
ER  -