Virginia TechJung, S.2014-04-242014-04-242010-03-01Jung, Sunghwan, "Caenorhabditis elegans swimming in a saturated particulate system," Phys. Fluids 22, 031903 (2010); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.33596111070-6631http://hdl.handle.net/10919/47611Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a nematode that often swims in saturated soil in nature. We investigated the locomotive behavior of C. elegans swimming in a fluid with particles of various sizes and found that the nematode swims a greater distance per undulation than it does in a fluid without particles. The Strouhal number (a ratio of lateral to forward velocity) of C. elegans significantly decreases in a saturated particulate medium (0.50 +/- 0.13) in comparison to a fluid without particles (1.6 +/- 0.27). This result was unexpected due to the generally low performance of a body moving in a high drag medium. In our model, a saturated granular system is approximated as a porous medium where only the hydrodynamic forces on the body are considered. Combining these assumptions with resistive force theory, we find that a porous medium provides more asymmetric drag on a slender body, and consequently that C. elegans locomotes with a greater distance per undulation. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3359611]application/pdfen-USIn CopyrightSlender-body theoryLocomotionFlowMovementNumberArticle - Refereedhttp://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/pof2/22/3/10.1063/1.3359611https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3359611