Abstract
Motivated by aggregation phenomena in gliding bacteria, we study collective motion in a two-dimensional model of active, self-propelled rods interacting through volume exclusion. In simulations with individual particles, we find that particle clustering is facilitated by a sufficiently large packing fraction or length-to-width ratio . The transition to clustering in simulations is well captured by a mean-field model for the cluster size distribution, which predicts that the transition values of the aspect ratio for a fixed packing fraction are given by where is a constant.
- Received 12 April 2006
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.74.030904
©2006 American Physical Society