Expérimental et théorique
From hairs on our skin to the microscopic cilia inside our respiratory tract, large aggregates of thin deformable structures in contact with fluids are ubiquitous. These structures can be active and beat synchronously to generate large scale flows, allowing organisms to move, feed themselves or transport key biological objects like the mucus or oocytes. In this project, we aim at building biomimetic inflatable cilia using a low-cost fabrication method that we recently developed: bubble casting. We will explore the miniaturization limits of the method and study how these pneumatic cilia move when inflated in a viscous liquid both in open and channel configurations with a potential counterflow.