Stretch-coil transition and transport of fibers in cellular flows

It is shown that a slender elastic fiber moving in a Stokesian fluid can be susceptible to a buckling instability-termed the "stretch-coil" instability-when moving in the neighborhood of a hyperbolic stagnation point of the flow. When the stagnation point is part of an extended cellular flow, it is found that immersed fibers can move as random walkers across time-independent closed-streamline flow. It is also found that the flow is segregated into transport regions around hyperbolic stagnation points and their manifolds, and closed entrapment regions around elliptic points.