Siluvai Antony Selvan

Cilia-driven flows in corals are crucial for exchanging nutrients, removing waste, and maintaining the ambient conditions necessary for corals' survival. While various studies have identified that ciliary activity can influence mass transport, the effect of local ciliary orientation and heterogeneity remains relatively unexplored.

Ciliary flows are generated by a vast array of eukaryotic organisms, from unicellular algae to mammals, and occur in a range of different geometrical configurations. We employ a point torque—or “rotlet”—model to capture the time-averaged ciliary flow above a planar rigid wall. We demonstrate the advantages (i.e., accuracy and computational efficiency) of using this, arguably simpler, approach compared to other singularity-based models in Stokes flows.