A note on swimming using internally generated traveling waves

In this note we bring together two ideas related to modeling the dynamics of swimming microorganisms: (1) as in Ajdari et al. [C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. II 319, 861 (1994)], we consider fluid transport from one end of an organism to the other using an internal deformable canal along which a traveling peristaltic deformation propagates at speed V; (2) as described in Stone and Samuel [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 4102 (1996)], the swimming speed U(t) of an organism may be simply related to the velocity of the surface. Thus, we obtain an explicit relation between the average swimming velocity [U] and V, as well as a more detailed picture of the time-varying flow in the canal and of the instantaneous swimming speed of the organism. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S1070-6631(99)00405-5].