• Corpus ID: 253383887

Systematic parameterisations of minimal models of microswimming

@inproceedings{Walker2022SystematicPO,
  title={Systematic parameterisations of minimal models of microswimming},
  author={Benjamin J. Walker and Kenta Ishimoto and Eamonn A. Gaffney},
  year={2022}
}

• B. J. Walker, K. Ishimoto, E. Gaffney
• Published 10 October 2022
• Biology

Simple models are used throughout the sciences as a means of developing intuition, capturing phenomenology, and qualitatively reproducing observations. In studies of microswimming, simple force-dipole models are commonplace, arising generically as the leading-order, far-field de-scriptions of a range of complex biological and artificial swimmers. Though many of these swimmers are associated with intricate, time varying flow fields and changing shapes, we often turn to models with constant, averaged parameters for intuition, basic understanding, and back-of-the-envelope prediction. In this brief study, via an elementary multi-timescale analysis, we examine whether the standard use of a priori -averaged parameters in minimal microswimmer models is justified, asking if their behavioural predictions qualitatively align with those of models that incorporate rapid temporal variation through simple extensions. In doing so, we highlight and exemplify how a straightforward asymptotic analysis of these non-autonomous models can result in effective, systematic parameterisations of minimal models of microswimming.