Related papers: Viscoelastic propulsion of a rotating dumbbell
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…
Microswimmers often use chirality to generate translational movement from rotation motion, exhibiting distinct behaviors in complex fluids compared to simple Newtonian fluids. However, the underlying mechanism remains incompletely…
We conduct experiments with flexible swimmers to address the impact of fluid viscoelasticity on their locomotion. The swimmers are composed of a magnetic head actuated in rotation by a frequency-controlled magnetic field and a flexible tail…
We employ computer simulations to unveil the translational and rotational dynamics of the self-driven chemically symmetric and asymmetric rigid dumbbells in two-dimensional polymer gel. Our results show that activity or the self-propulsion…
We conduct experiments with force-free magnetically-driven rigid helical swimmers in Newtonian and viscoelastic (Boger) fluids. By varying the sizes of the swimmer body and its helical tail, we show that the impact of viscoelasticity…
Micro-swimmer locomotion in heterogeneous media is increasingly relevant in biological physics due to the prevalence of microorganisms in complex environments. A model for such porous media is the Brinkman fluid which accounts for a sparse…
We consider the dynamics of micro-sized, asymmetrically-coated thermoresponsive hydrogel ribbons (microgels) under periodic heating and cooling in the confined space between two planar surfaces. As the result of the temperature changes, the…
We study the fluid drift due to a time-dependent dumbbell model of a microswimmer. The model captures important aspects of real microswimmers such as a time-dependent flagellar motion and a no-slip body. The model consists of a rigid sphere…
Many microorganisms swim through gels and non-Newtonian fluids in their natural environments. In this paper, we focus on microorganisms which use flagella for propulsion. We address how swimming velocities are affected in nonlinearly…
Many small organisms self-propel in viscous fluids using travelling wave-like deformation of their bodies or appendages. Examples include small nematodes moving through soil using whole-body undulations or spermatozoa swimming through mucus…
When a colloidal probe is forced through a viscoelastic fluid which is characterized by a long stress-relaxation time, the fluid is excited out of equilibrium. This is leading to a number of interesting effects including a non-trivial…
An axisymmetric squirmer in a Bingham viscoplastic fluid is studied numerically to determine the effect of a yield stress environment on locomotion. The nonlinearity of the governing equations necessitates numerical methods, which is…
In this paper we study the self-propulsion of a dumbbell micro-robot submerged in a viscous fluid. The micro-robot consists of two rigid spherical beads connected by a rod or a spring; the rod's/spring's length is changing periodically. The…
We use numerical simulations to address locomotion at zero Reynolds number in viscoelastic (Giesekus) fluids. The swimmers are assumed to be spherical, to self-propel using tangential surface deformation, and the computations are…
Lubrication flows between two solid surfaces can be found in a variety of biological and engineering settings. In many of these systems, the lubricant exhibits viscoelastic properties, which modify the associated lubrication forces. Here,…
The dynamics of elastic dumbbells in linear shear flow is investigated by fluid particle dynamics simulations at small Reynolds numbers. The positive contribution of a single dumbbell to the effective shear viscosity is determined via the…
Flagella beating in complex fluids are significantly influenced by viscoelastic stresses. Relevant examples include the ciliary transport of respiratory airway mucus and the motion of spermatozoa in the mucus-filled female reproductive…
The effect of fluctuating internal viscosity and hydrodynamic interactions on a range of rheological properties of dilute polymer solutions is examined using a finitely extensible dumbbell model for a polymer. Brownian dynamics simulations…
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…
The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…