WS, Shravan Veerapaneni: Shape and functional optimization of microswimmers with meshfree methods

Speaker
Shravan Veerapaneni, University of Michigan

Abstract
This talk presents a suite of recent advances in numerical algorithms that enabled rapid simulation capabilities for collective motion of microswimmers at scale. A key application problem we shall consider is the shape and slip optimization of microswimmers in viscous flows. Existing mesh-based methods require volume remeshing between optimization iterations or during transient simulations, incurring substantial computational cost. We present a meshfree approach combining boundary integral equations with spectral geometry representations that eliminates the need for remeshing. To fully leverage the dimensionality reduction feature of boundary integral methods, we formulate shape sensitivities requiring evaluation only on fluid domain boundaries, as demonstrated through several problems of practical interest.