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Enhanced flagellar swimming through a compliant viscoelastic network in Stokes flow
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2016
Abstract
In many physiological settings, microorganisms must swim through viscous fluids with suspended polymeric networks whose length scales are comparable to that of the organism. Here we present a model of a flagellar swimmer moving through a compliant viscoelastic network immersed in a three-dimensional viscous fluid. The swimmer moves with a prescribed gait, exerting forces on the fluid and the heterogeneous network. The viscoelastic structural links of this network are stretched or compressed in response to the fluid flow caused by these forces, and these elastic deformations also generate forces on the viscous fluid. Here we track the swimmer as it leaves a region of Newtonian fluid, enters and moves through a heterogeneous network and finally enters a Newtonian region again. We find that stiffer networks give a boost to the velocity of the swimmer. In addition, we find that the efficiency of swimming is dependent upon the evolution of the compliant network as the swimmer progresses through it.
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- © 2016 Cambridge University Press
References
Wróbel et al. supplementary movie
Swimmer moving through the low connectivity cubic viscoelastic network composed of 1344 links.
Wróbel et al. supplementary movie
Swimmer moving through the low connectivity cubic viscoelastic network composed of 1344 links.
Wróbel et al. supplementary movie
Swimmer moving through the high connectivity viscoelastic network composed of 5068 links.
Wróbel et al. supplementary movie
Swimmer moving through the high connectivity viscoelastic network composed of 5068 links.
Wróbel et al. supplementary movie
Swimmer moving through the low connectivity rotated cubic viscoelastic network composed of 1344 links.
Wróbel et al. supplementary movie
Swimmer moving through the low connectivity rotated cubic viscoelastic network composed of 1344 links.
Wróbel et al. supplementary movie
Swimmer moving through the high connectivity rotated cubic viscoelastic network composed of 5068 links.
Wróbel et al. supplementary movie
Swimmer moving through the high connectivity rotated cubic viscoelastic network composed of 5068 links.
Wróbel et al. supplementary movie
Swimmer moving through the high connectivity perturbed cubic viscoelastic network composed of 1344 links.
Wróbel et al. supplementary movie
Swimmer moving through the high connectivity perturbed cubic viscoelastic network composed of 1344 links.
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