Mechanics of Cilia Beating: Quantifying the behaviours that define effective cilia driven fluid flow

This thesis explores the mechanical properties of cilia driven fluid flow through computer simulations of cilia interacting with fluid. First of all we look at the effect of a single beating cilium on a large fluid region by examining the fluid velocity profiles associated with the resulting fluid flow. From these results we are able to quantify the observed velocity profile using a characteristic length, and show the relationship between this characteristic length and the Reynolds number. We go on to investigate the relationship between the metachronal wavelength of an array of beating cilia and the resulting fluid flow rate. We find that the observed relationship is well described by the clustering of cilia during the active stroke, and we quantify this by deriving an analytical model of the free area in the cilium array which depends on the metachronal wavelength. We show that there is a strong correlation between our analytical model and simulation results, which implies that the changes in fluid flow rate linked to a change in free area. Next we look at the differences in fluid flow with and without metachrony for a large array of cilia, concluding that the increase of fluid flow rate due to metachrony is greater when the space between cilia is reduced.