#2 Synchronization of oscillators in a fluid

Rich nonlinear dynamics can emerge from hydrodynamic interactions between particles in a fluid. One problem of interest is synchronization in biological flows at the micrometer scale, such as the synchronization of bacterial flagella and the transport of organelles in living organisms by cilia. In this project, we will investigate how oscillating particles in a fluid synchronize due to hydrodynamic interactions. The lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM) will be used to solve fluid dynamics and fluid-solid interaction. We will measure the characteristic time that oscillators take to synchronize as a function of system parameters such as distance, viscosity, and frequency and compare it with predictions from a simple effective model, the Kuramotto model.