Coarse-graining the fluid flow around a human sperm

Kenta Ishimoto, Hermes Gadelha, Eamonn A Gaffney, David Smith, Jackson Kirkman-Brown

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

37 Citations (Scopus)
286 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The flagellar beat is extracted from human sperm digital imaging microscopy and used to determine the flow around the cell and its trajectory, via boundary element simulation. Comparison of the predicted cell trajectory with observation demonstrates that simulation can predict fine-scale sperm dynamics at the qualitative level. The flow field is also observed to reduce to a time-dependent summation of regularized Stokes flow singularities, approximated at leading order by a blinking force triplet. Such regularized singularity decompositions may be used to upscale cell level detail into population models of human sperm motility.
Original languageEnglish
Article number124501
Number of pages5
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume118
Issue number12
Early online date23 Mar 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Mar 2017

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