Hydrodynamic Interactions at Low Reynolds Number

We consider the hydrodynamic interactions of low Reynolds number microswimmers, presenting a review of recent work based upon models of linked sphere swimmers. Particular attention is paid to those aspects that are generic, applicable to all microswimmers and not only to the simple models considered. The importance of the relative phase in swimmer-swimmer interactions is emphasised, as is the role of simple symmetry arguments in both understanding and constraining the hydrodynamic properties of microswimmers. © Society for Experimental Mechanics 2010