Interaction Between Two Closely-Spaced Waving Slender Elastic Cylinders Immersed in a Viscous Fluid

We study the hydrodynamic interaction between two closely-spaced waving elastic cylinders immersed within a viscous liquid, at the creeping flow regime. The cylinders are actuated by a forced oscillation of the slope at their clamped end and are free at the opposite end. We obtain an expression for the interaction force and apply an asymptotic expansion based on a small parameter representing the ratio between the elastic deflections and the distance between the cylinders. The leading-order solution is an asymmetric oscillation pattern at the two frequencies ($ω_1,ω_2$) in which the cylinders are actuated. Higher orders oscillate at frequencies which are combinations of the actuation frequencies, where the first-order includes the $2ω_1,2ω_2,ω_1+ω_2$, and $ω_1-ω_2$ harmonics. For in-phase actuation with $ω_1= ω_2$, the deflection dynamics are identical to an isolated cylinder with a modified Sperm number. For configurations with $ω_1\approx ω_2$, the $ω_1-ω_2$ mode represents the dominant first-order interaction effect due to significantly smaller effective Sperm number. Experiments are conducted to verify and illustrate the theoretical predictions.

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