Modelling micromachines with elastic parts in a viscous environment

Abstract

 Designing micromachines with elastic components has not been addressed by the research community. In this paper, the Boundary Element Method for Stokes flows is used to model a micromachine consisting of a “head” and an elastic “tail” immersing in viscous fluid. The general numerical implementation can be used for a wide range of micromachines with rotating and arbitrarily deforming tail.

A particular periodic tail motion is suggested for illustrative purposes. To assist the forward motion, enlarging of the head during the second half cycle only is proposed. A physical model has been suggested that may be used for comparing its performance with that deduced from our calculations.