Hydrodynamic interactions between swimming microorganisms in a linearly density stratified fluid.

Oceans and lakes sustain intense biological activity due to the motion of marine organisms, which has significant ecological and environmental impacts. The motion of individual organisms and their interactions with each other play a significant role in the collective motion of swimming organisms. However, ubiquitous vertical density stratification in these aquatic environments significantly alters the swimmer interactions as compared to in a homogeneous fluid. Furthermore, organisms have sizes varying over a wide range which results in finite inertia. To this end, we numerically investigate the interactions between a pair of model swimming organisms in two configurations: (1) approaching each other and (2) moving side by side with finite inertia in a linearly density stratified fluid. We use the archetypal reduced-order squirmer model to numerically model the swimming organisms. We present trajectories and the contact times of interacting squirmer (puller & pusher) pairs for different Re in the range 1-50 and Ri in the range 0-10. Depending on the squirmer Re and Ri we observe that the squirmer interactions can be categorized as (i) pullers getting trapped in circular loops at high Re and low Ri, (ii) pullers escaping each other with separating angle decreasing with increasing stratification at low Re and high Ri, (iii) pushers sticking to each other after the collision and deflecting away from the collision plane for either low Re or high Ri, (iv) pushers escaping otherwise with an angle of separation increasing with stratification. Stratification also increases the contact time for squirmer pairs. The presented results can be useful to understand the mechanisms behind the accumulation of planktonic organisms in horizontal layers in a stratified environment such as oceans and lakes.