Mathematical modeling of sperm and cilia motility

Robert Dillon, Washington State University

9:00 - 9:40

The motility of sperm flagella and cilia are based on a common physiological structure capable of generating a wide range of dynamical behavior. We describe a fluid-mechanical model for sperm and cilia coupling the internal force generation of dynein molecular motors through the passive elastic axonemal structure with the external fluid mechanics. As shown in numerical simulations for motile sperm, the model's flagellar waveform depends strongly on viscosity as well as dynein strength.