The area element in plane polar coordinates is . Thus the axial moment of inertia is
For the removed material, the angular width is , and
Its moment of inertia is therefore , leaving
The torque equation gives constant angular acceleration, so the time to reach the prescribed angular speed from rest is
To find the centre of mass after removing material, let point along the bisector of the missing sector in the disc. The original disc has zero first mass moment about its centre. The missing sector has zero transverse first moment by reflection symmetry, while its component along is
because the radial integral is . The remaining first moment is . Dividing by the given mass gives the body-fixed centre of mass
It lies away from the missing sector. In the inertial frame, let be the moment the applied torque stops and let give the orientation of that sector's bisector. Then, with ,
The centre of mass has inward centripetal acceleration of magnitude . The required real force is the constraint reaction exerted by the fixed rod and its support. Its horizontal resultant is ; a zero applied axial torque does not imply a zero resultant force.
A Stokeslet is the flow produced by a point force. With , its tensor is . A separated pair of equal and opposite forces has no force monopole. Expanding their difference in the separation gives a directional derivative of this tensor. For an axial pair, choose the sign of the strength so that
The trace part of does not affect the flow because . The remaining symmetric force-dipole contribution is the stresslet, decaying as instead of the Stokeslet's . A force-free swimming cell has thrust balanced by drag, so this is typically its leading far field. With it is a pusher microswimmer: axial outflow and transverse inflow. It is distinct from the antisymmetric torque singularity, the rotlet.
The rotlet is the point-torque fundamental solution of Stokes flow. Its torque strength is an axial vector, and its circulating velocity decays as . A freely swimming cell with no external torque is torque-free. The motor applies opposite internal torques to its body and flagellar apparatus, so the net torque monopole satisfies
Individual body and flagellar torques need not vanish. A spatially separated pair can therefore leave a rotlet dipole even though there is no far-field rotlet monopole.
A flagellar bundle and the counterrotating body supply oppositely signed axial torques separated along the swimming direction. Their leading torque moments cancel, and the next term is a rotlet dipole, decaying as . For the ideal axisymmetric bacterium the torque vector is parallel or antiparallel to .
To fix the sign convention, define a signed dipole strength with units torque times length and set
Differentiating gives
More generally, differentiating gives ; the first term vanishes when . A derivative with respect to source position instead of observation position changes the definition of the signed moment. The physical handedness depends on which torque is ahead, so it cannot be fixed without that convention.
Take and the surface normal . Under reflection in the free surface, polar vectors transform by and an axial torque transforms by . A parallel torque therefore reverses sign, while the separation direction does not. The free-surface image of a rotlet dipole is a dipole of strength at .
The observation point at the cell is directly below the image, so and the image velocity vanishes. A symmetry proof of the vanishing normal drift is also useful: reflection in the vertical plane containing reverses the axial dipole moment, preserves the normal component of a polar velocity, and leaves the geometry unchanged. Linearity would make that same component change sign with , forcing it to be zero. Thus this singularity alone produces no attraction or repulsion.
Write relative to the image, so the cell is at . The image field is
Although its value at the cell is zero, its velocity gradient is not. In particular, the surface-induced yaw of a rotlet dipole has
A spherical torque-free body rotates with the local fluid angular velocity . Its swimming direction therefore turns in the surface plane and, at fixed height and speed, it traces a circle with radius . The sign of sets the sense of turning in this convention. An elongated swimmer also responds to strain; its rotation coefficient depends on its shape and need not equal one half of the vorticity. When the stresslet is included, its changing height produces a changing turning rate rather than an exactly fixed-radius circle.
In plane polar coordinates, use and . Their derivatives are and . Differentiating gives the velocity and acceleration in polar coordinates:
Both the electrostatic inverse-square force and the drag point radially, so the torque about the origin is zero even though the force depends on radial velocity. The vector angular momentum is constant. For , every position lies in the fixed plane perpendicular to it; if , the trajectory is radial and still lies in a plane. In the nonzero case the transverse equation is , giving
The signed depends on the plane orientation. The stipulated ratio requires .
Set and use primes for differentiation with respect to . Then , and . The radial equation is , so
This damped Binet equation has the general solution, for ,
It is used on the physical interval where . For either sign of , introduce the forward angular distance ; then the exponential is . Thus damping acts forward in time for both orientations, not just when .
For unit mass, the kinetic energy is and the electrostatic potential energy is . Therefore
Using the damped Binet equation,
and multiplication by gives
This is also the drag force times the radial speed. Energy is nonincreasing in time, strictly decreasing while radial motion occurs; a circular trajectory already has constant energy. The sign of alone would be misleading for negative .
To justify circularization under radial inverse-square drag, suppose the forward trajectory remains bounded, . Since and the effective radial potential energy tends to as , the radius is also bounded away from zero. Velocity then stays bounded, so the solution continues for all forward time without collision. Moreover , so . The decaying general solution gives and . Consequently
The tangential motion remains, so the limiting orbit is circular. The convergence is asymptotic; boundedness is needed because a physical solution could otherwise reach and escape rather than complete indefinitely many turns.
Figure 1.
Bounded inverse-square orbit with radial drag approaching a circular orbit, with nonincreasing energy converging to the circular-orbit value
.
The example uses , and , which stays positive. Radial oscillations decay while angular momentum stays fixed.
The work done by a force is . By the work-energy theorem, this has the same physical dimension as energy. Thus
Although torque and energy have the same physical dimension, they represent different physical quantities.
The torque about an origin is . A cross product multiplies the dimensions of its factors, so torque has the physical dimension of length times force:
Let be the rate-of-strain tensor and the Newtonian fluid stress tensor. The viscous dissipation is . The Minimum-dissipation theorem for Stokes flow compares the Stokes flow with every sufficiently regular incompressible flow in the same domain having the same prescribed boundary velocity, with no body force or with a conservative body force absorbed into the fluid pressure. A trial field need not satisfy the Stokes flow equations. Write it as , with and on the boundary. Integration by parts, the symmetry of the Newtonian fluid stress tensor, and give
Consequently the Stokes flow minimizes dissipation:
Equality requires a rigid body motion of , which the prescribed boundary eliminates. Extending the flow inside the inserted particle as its rigid body velocity produces an admissible comparison field with zero internal rate-of-strain tensor; hence the extra dissipation due to a rigid inclusion is nonnegative.
Here and below on points into the particle, so the traction represents force exerted by the particle on the fluid. Apply the Lorentz reciprocal theorem for Stokes flow in the fluid region to and the restriction of . The equal outer boundary velocities yield
The boundary-work formula for viscous dissipation therefore gives . The last integral is zero: is symmetric and divergence-free throughout the particle's original volume, so its total force and torque there vanish, and on is a rigid body velocity. This also allows the sign of this zero-work term to be reversed, giving exactly
With the particle's centre as origin, define , and the particle stresslet tensor . Contracting the linear background velocity with the traction gives
The background rate-of-strain tensor is symmetric and trace-free; the trace of this unprojected particle stresslet tensor does not affect the contraction.
For the straight-rod resistance in a linear flow, write , , , and , . The slender-body force density becomes . The integrals of and are and , respectively, so
For a force-free, torque-free rod, and the perpendicular component of is . Axial spin is not determined by this leading, zero-thickness slender-body theory; it has no effect on . Put . The vector identity gives
The force-free straight-rod orientation equation combines the background rotation with the part of strain that turns the rod; removing preserves its unit length. A rigid body cannot undergo the axial extension or compression imposed by , so opposite axial forces resist that deformation. No leading slender-body force density is needed when , even though the rod may rotate. Its particle stresslet tensor and viscous dissipation are
In the simple shear flow, , and . Thus the rod excess dissipation in shear is
The maxima at correspond to strongest axial extension and compression. The zeros at correspond to zero axial strain: a rod aligned with the velocity or its gradient needs no leading force at that instant. For , with the continuous branch and . Reversing the shear flow reverses the traversal. Substitution gives
The tails make the total finite; the instantaneous zero at lies between two maxima.
For a dilute rod suspension, the added bulk stress is the number density times the orientation average of the particle stresslet tensor. In this ideal infinitely slender, non-interacting model, rods approach alignment with the shear flow and their excess viscous dissipation decays. A real finite-aspect-ratio rod continues to tumble; rotational diffusion and interactions also maintain a spread of orientations. One therefore expects increased effective viscosity, with alignment offering a mechanism for reduced excess viscosity at strong shear flow. This is a qualitative expectation, not a claim that a finite rod suspension has zero steady excess stress.
A central force has no component in the angular direction. The angular component of the acceleration in polar coordinates therefore gives , or
For unit mass, is the signed angular momentum perpendicular to the orbital plane, so its magnitude is conserved. Equivalently, the torque vanishes, which also fixes that plane.
The given potential energy is , whose radial force is : positive is repulsive and negative attractive. The kinetic energy in polar coordinates is , so conservation of energy gives
For and , the effective potential is positive, strictly decreasing from to , and has no stationary point. For , it still tends to at zero, crosses zero at , and has its unique minimum at
It then approaches zero from below. The minimum corresponds to a stable circular orbit. If , the centrifugal barrier disappears; the attractive effective potential is simply and has no minimum.
Figure 1. . Effective potentials with unit angular momentum and k equal to plus or minus one. The attractive minimum and zero are marked.
Linearity of Stokes flow and rotational symmetry, including reflection in mathematics invariance of the spherical geometry, determine the possible rigid motions before any calculation. Translation is a polar vector; its linear dependence on a single vector must be . A traceless second-rank tensor cannot produce a polar vector by an isotropic linear map: tensor contraction with the identity matrix vanishes and tensor contraction with the totally antisymmetric tensor vanishes because is a symmetric second-rank tensor. Angular velocity is an axial vector. Neither nor a symmetric can produce one by an isotropic linear map. Products such as are excluded by Linearity of Stokes flow. Thus .
Use the Unscaled Papkovich–Neuber representation, with harmonic functions and :
Indeed and because each potential is a harmonic function. Put and . The decaying harmonic functions with the necessary angular dependence are , and . The last is a harmonic function precisely because . A Stokeslet is excluded by the force-free condition, and a rotlet by the torque-free condition. Try
The resulting Stokes flow is
At , the coefficient of fixes ; the remaining constant vector gives . In the mode, matching gives and . Therefore the complete two-mode tensorial squirmer flow is
The boundary condition is satisfied in the laboratory frame, so the Stokes flow tends to zero at infinity. The potential dipole in the mode gives an irrotational flow and decays as ; the leading mode is a stresslet, decaying as . Neither carries a net force or torque. Direct surface integral averaging with the surface slip velocity formula gives the same translation, providing an independent check. Uniqueness of Stokes flow then identifies this decaying solution.