title: Stretch-coil transition and transport of fibers in cellular flows.
abstract: It is shown that a slender elastic fiber moving in a Stokesian fluid can be susceptible to a buckling instability--termed the "stretch-coil" instability--when moving in the neighborhood of a hyperbolic stagnation point of the flow. When the stagnation point is part of an extended cellular flow, it is found that immersed fibers can move as random walkers across time-independent closed-streamline flow. It is also found that the flow is segregated into transport regions around hyperbolic stagnation points and their manifolds, and closed entrapment regions around elliptic points.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematical Sciences, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey 07102, USA.
authors.forename: Y-N
authors.initials: YN
authors.lastname: Young
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Shelley