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THRIFTY SWIMMING WITH SHEAR-THINNING: A NOTE ON OUT-OF-PLANE EFFECTS FOR UNDULATORY LOCOMOTION THROUGH SHEAR-THINNING FLUIDS

Part of: Biological fluid mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2018

D. A. GAGNON Open the ORCID record for D. A. GAGNON [Opens in a new window]  and
T. D. MONTENEGRO-JOHNSON Open the ORCID record for T. D. MONTENEGRO-JOHNSON [Opens in a new window]
D. A. GAGNON*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Institute for Soft Matter Synthesis and Metrology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, USA email [email protected] Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
T. D. MONTENEGRO-JOHNSON
Affiliation:
School of Mathematics, University of Birmingham, UK email [email protected]
*
✉[email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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Microscale propulsion is integral to numerous biomedical systems, including biofilm formation and human reproduction, where the surrounding fluids comprise suspensions of polymers. These polymers endow the fluid with non-Newtonian rheological properties, such as shear-thinning and viscoelasticity. Thus, the complex dynamics of non-Newtonian fluids present numerous modelling challenges. Here, we demonstrate that neglecting ‘out-of-plane’ effects during swimming through a shear-thinning fluid results in a significant overestimate of fluid viscosity around the undulatory swimmer Caenorhabditis elegans. This miscalculation of viscosity corresponds with an overestimate of the power the swimmer expends, a key biophysical quantity important for understanding the internal mechanics of the swimmer. As experimental flow-tracking techniques improve, accurate experimental estimates of power consumption in similar undulatory systems, such as the planar beating of human sperm through cervical mucus, will be required to probe the interaction between internal power generation, fluid rheology, and the resulting waveform.

Keywords

low-Reynolds number swimmingundulatory propulsionC. elegansnon-Newtonian fluids

MSC classification

Primary: 76Z99: None of the above, but in this section
Type
Research Article
Information
The ANZIAM Journal , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , April 2018 , pp. 443 - 454
Copyright
© 2018 Australian Mathematical Society 

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