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The motion of flexible fibers through structured fluidic environments isubiquitous in nature and industrial applications. Most often, their dynamicsresults from the complex interplay between internal elastic stresses, contactforces and hydrodynamic interactions with the walls and obstacles. By means ofnumerical simulations, experiments and analytical predictions, we investigatethe dynamics of flexible fibers settling in a viscous fluid embedded withobstacles of arbitrary shapes. We identify and characterize two types ofevents: trapping and gliding, for which we detail the mechanisms at play. Weobserve nontrivial trapping conformations on sharp obstacles that result from asubtle balance between elasticity, gravity and friction. In the gliding case, aflexible fiber reorients and drifts sideways after sliding along the obstacle.The subsequent lateral displacement is large compared to the fiber length andstrongly depends on its mechanical and geometrical properties. We show howthese effects can be leveraged to propose a new strategy to sort particlesbased on their size and/or elasticity. This approach has the major advantage ofbeing simple to implement and fully passive, since no energy is needed.

Obstacle-induced lateral dispersion and nontrivial trapping of flexible fibers settling in a viscous fluid