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Microscale propulsion is integral to numerous biomedical systems, for example biofilm formation and human reproduction, where the surrounding fluids comprise suspensions of polymers. These polymers endow the fluid with non-Newtonian…
Shear-thinning viscosity is a non-Newtonian behaviour that active particles often encounter in biological fluids such as blood and mucus. The fundamental question of how this ubiquitous non-Newtonian rheology affects the propulsion of…
In biological systems, microswimmers often propel themselves through complex media. However, many aspects of swimming mechanisms in non-Newtonian fluids remain unclear. This study considers the propulsion of two types of single spherical…
Many cells exploit the bending or rotation of flagellar filaments in order to self-propel in viscous fluids. While appropriate theoretical modelling is available to capture flagella locomotion in simple, Newtonian fluids, formidable…
Shear-thinning is an important rheological property of many biological fluids, such as mucus, whereby the apparent viscosity of the fluid decreases with shear. Certain microscopic swimmers have been shown to progress more rapidly through…
Micro-organisms expend energy moving through complex media. While propulsion speed is an important property of locomotion, efficiency is another factor that may determine the swimming gait adopted by a micro-organism in order to locomote in…
Bacteria often exhibit upstream swimming, which can cause the contamination of biomedical devices and the infection of organs including the urethra or lungs. This process, called rheotaxis, has been studied extensively in Newtonian fluids.…
Many microorganisms find themselves immersed in fluids displaying non-Newtonian rheological properties such as viscoelasticity and shear-thinning viscosity. The effects of viscoelasticity on swimming at low Reynolds numbers have already…
Swimming microorganisms often have to propel in complex, non-Newtonian fluids. We carry out experiments with self-propelling helical swimmers driven by an externally rotating magnetic field in shear-thinning, inelastic fluids. Similarly to…
Interactions between microorganisms and their complex flowing environments are essential in many biological systems. We develop a model for microswimmer dynamics in non-Newtonian Poiseuille flows. We predict that swimmers in…
Numerous natural processes are contingent on microorganisms' ability to swim through fluids with non-Newtonian rheology. Here, we use the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans and tracking methods to experimentally investigate the dynamics…
The swimming behaviour of microorganisms can be strongly influenced by the rheology of their fluid environment. In this manuscript, we experimentally investigate the effects of shear-thinning viscosity on the swimming behaviour of an…
Swimming microorganisms often self propel in fluids with complex rheology. While past theoretical work indicates that fluid viscoelasticity should hinder their locomotion, recent experiments on waving swimmers suggest a possible…
Microorganisms such as bacteria often swim in fluid environments that cannot be classified as Newtonian. Many biological fluids contain polymers or other heterogeneities which may yield complex rheology. For a given set of boundary…
Many bacteria live in natural and clinical environments with abundant macromolecular polymers. Macromolecular fluids commonly display viscoelasticity and non-Newtonian rheological behavior; it is unclear how these complex-fluid properties…
Particle motion in non-Newtonian fluids can be markedly different than in Newtonian fluids. Here we look at the change in dynamics for a few problems involving rigid spherical particles in shear-thinning fluids in the absence of inertia. We…
Undulatory locomotion is a means of self-propulsion that relies on the generation and propagation of waves along a body. As a mode of locomotion it is primitive and relatively simple, yet can be remarkably robust. No wonder then, that it is…
The study of active matter system has critical importance in revealing the physical essence of biological collective behavior. Dense bacterial suspension - a typical biological active matter, exhibits a wide range of phenomenons, among…
The biological fluids encountered by self-propelled cells display complex microstructures and rheology. We consider here the general problem of low-Reynolds number locomotion in a complex fluid. {Building on classical work on the transport…
In this article we discuss the generalization of a Lagrange multiplier based fictitious domain (DLM/FD) method to simulating the motion of neutrally buoyant particles of non-symmetric shape in non-Newtonian shear thinning fluids. Numerical…