Peristalsis by pulses of activity

Nikolai Gorbushin (1) , Lev Truskinovsky (1)

1 PMMH - Physique et mécanique des milieux hétérogenes (UMR 7636)

Peristalsis by actively generated waves of muscle contraction is one of the most fundamental ways of producing motion in living systems. We show that peristalsis can be modeled by a train of rectangular-shaped solitary waves of localized activity propagating through otherwise passive matter. Our analysis is based on the FPU-type discrete model accounting for active stresses and we reveal the existence in this problem of a critical regime which we argue to be physiologically advantageous.

Domaines: Matériaux et structures en mécanique [physics.class-ph]

Nikolai Gorbushin, Lev Truskinovsky. Peristalsis by pulses of activity. 2021. ⟨hal-03100810⟩