Related papers: A note on higher order perturbative corrections to…

Viscoelastic fluids are a common subclass of rheologically complex materials that are encountered in diverse fields from biology to polymer processing. Often the flows of viscoelastic fluids are unstable in situations where ordinary…

Small organisms (e.g., bacteria) and artificial microswimmers move due to a combination of active swimming and passive Brownian motion. Considering a simplified linear three-sphere swimmer, we study how the swimmer size regulates the…

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…

Swimming by shape changes at low Reynolds number is widely used in biology and understanding how the efficiency of movement depends on the geometric pattern of shape changes is important to understand swimming of microorganisms and in…

The mechanism of swimming at very low Reynolds number conditions is a topic of interest to biologists and engineering community. We develop a novel kinematic model of a slender flexible swimmer which locomotes in a low Reynolds number…

The current work studies the dynamics of a microswimmer in pressure-driven flow of a weakly viscoelastic fluid. Employing the second-order fluid model, we show that the self-propelling swimmer experiences a viscoelastic swimming lift in…

Microorganisms thrive in complex environments and their behavior in fluids holds significant importance for various medical and industrial applications. By conducting Lattice Boltzmann simulations, the transport and rotational properties of…

Reduced-order models have been widely adopted in fluid mechanics, particularly in the context of Newtonian fluid flows. These models offer the ability to predict complex dynamics, such as instabilities and oscillations, at a considerably…

Viscoelastic materials containing bubbles or drops are encountered in numerous application fields, and are presently the object of much interest. The motion of bubbles and drops in these matrices can be significantly different than in…

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…

The effects of fluid viscosity on the kinematics of a small swimmer at low Reynolds number are investigated in both experiments and in a simple model. The swimmer is the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, which is an undulating roundworm…

We perform direct numerical simulations of planar jets of non-Newtonian fluids at low Reynolds number, in typical laminar conditions for a Newtonian fluid. We select three different non-Newtonian fluid models characterized by shear-thinning…

Cell motility in viscous fluids is ubiquitous and affects many biological processes, including reproduction, infection, and the marine life ecosystem. Here we review the biophysical and mechanical principles of locomotion at the small…

The locomotion of microorganisms in fluids is ubiquitous and plays an important role in numerous biological processes. In this chapter we present an overview of theoretical modeling for low-Reynolds-number locomotion.

Organisms often swim through fluids that are spatially inhomogeneous. If the fluids are polymeric, gradients in polymer concentration may lead to gradients in both fluid viscosity and elasticity. In this letter, we present theoretical…

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…

Microswimmers in nature often experience spatial gradients of viscosity. In this work we develop theoretical results for the dynamics of active particles, biological or otherwise, swimming through viscosity gradients. We model the active…

The ciliary locomotion and feeding of an axisymmetric micro-swimmer in a complex fluid whose viscosity depends on nutrient concentration are investigated numerically. The micro-swimmer is modeled as having spheroidal geometry, and ciliary…

We study, by means of an exact analytical solution, the motion of a spheroidal, axisymmetric squirmer in an unbounded fluid, as well as the low Reynolds number hydrodynamic flow associated to it. In contrast to the case of a spherical…

Viscoelastic rate-type fluids are popular models of choice in many applications involving flows of fluid-like materials with complex micro-structure. A well-developed mathematical theory for the most of these classical fluid models is…