Coarse-Graining the Fluid Flow around a Human Sperm

Kenta Ishimoto, Hermes Gadêlha, Eamonn A. Gaffney, David J. Smith, and Jackson Kirkman-Brown
Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 124501 – Published 23 March 2017
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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.

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  • Received 5 December 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.124501

© 2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Fluid Dynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Kenta Ishimoto1,2, Hermes Gadêlha3,6,7, Eamonn A. Gaffney4, David J. Smith5,6,7, and Jackson Kirkman-Brown6,7

  • 1The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
  • 2Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
  • 3Department of Mathematics, University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom
  • 4Wolfson Centre for Mathematical Biology, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, United Kingdom
  • 5School of Mathematics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
  • 6Institute for Metabolism and Systems Research, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
  • 7Centre for Human Reproductive Science, Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham B15 2TG, United Kingdom

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Issue

Vol. 118, Iss. 12 — 24 March 2017

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