Heat transfer from drops in shearing flows and collective motion in micro-scale swimmer suspensions

Abstract

In this work we study two problems involving fluid flow and transport phenomena at small length scales. The first is concerned with solving the fundamental problem of heat or mass transfer from neutrally buoyant drops in an ambient shearing flow, where the rate of heat or mass transfer is calculated by a boundary layer analysis in the strong convection limit. In the second, we investigate through numerical simulations, the conditions for the onset of collective motion in a micro-scale swimmer suspension. This thesis is organized in two distinct parts with the drop heat transfer problem appearing first followed by the study on micro-scale swimmers.