Propulsion in a viscoelastic fluid

By Eric Lauga. 2007

337 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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 tract. We consider the simplest model of such propulsion and transport in a complex fluid, a waving sheet of small amplitude free to move in a polymeric fluid with a single relaxation time. We show that, compared to self-propulsion in a Newtonian fluid occurring at a velocity UN, the sheet swims (or transports fluid) with velocity U∕UN=(1+De2ηs∕η)∕(1+De2), where ηs is the viscosity of the Newtonian solvent, η is the zero-shear-rate viscosity of the polymeric fluid, and De is the Deborah number for the wave motion, product of the wave frequency by the fluid relaxation time. Similar expressions are derived for the rate of work of the sheet and the mechanical efficiency of the motion. These results are shown to be independent of the particular nonlinear constitutive equations ...

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ddb20019ff51fcddb9407d44a193647a480e7ebc

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Eamonn A. Gaffney
2. Eric Lauga
3. T. Powers
4. J. Rodrigo Vélez-Cordero
5. David. J. Smith
6. Jackson C. Kirkman-Brown
7. J. Blake
8. Arezoo Motavalizadeh Ardekani

In Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes

1. J. Rodrigo Vélez-Cordero
2. T. Powers
3. Arezoo Motavalizadeh Ardekani
4. Gaojin Li
5. David. J. Smith
6. Jackson C. Kirkman-Brown
7. J. Blake
8. Eamonn A. Gaffney

In Materials Chemistry

1. T. Powers
2. J. Rodrigo Vélez-Cordero
3. David. J. Smith
4. Jackson C. Kirkman-Brown
5. J. Blake
6. Eamonn A. Gaffney
7. Arezoo Motavalizadeh Ardekani
8. Gaojin Li

Citations in the corpus

• The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms (2008, methodology): “Through the nonlinear terms of equation (59), this stress field drives a second-order flow that leads to the swimming speed [274]”
• Microswimming in viscoelastic fluids (2021, background): “However, ven at small-amplitude, the nonlinear impact of viscoelastic stress is mportant [86].”
• Human sperm accumulation near surfaces: a simulation study (2009, methodology): “1984; Lauga et al. 2006). However despite a number of studies involving both hydrodynamic modelling and microscopy, the phenomenon has not been fully explained. Fauci & McDonald (1995) used the immersed boundary technique to simulate sperm accumulation in a two-dimensional flow regime, equivalent to”
• Active Particles in Complex and Crowded Environments (2016, background): “Since the scallop theorem no longer holds in complex non-Newtonian fluids, it is possible to design and build novel swimmers that specifically operate in these complex fluids: for example, fluid elasticity can be used to either enhance or retard propulsion in non-Newtonian fluids (Lauga, 2007; Lesha”
• Waving transport and propulsion in a generalized Newtonian fluid (2013, methodology): “Elastic stresses, in contrast, do contribute at order Oð 2Þ and hinder the fluid transport by the prefactor [12,19]:”
• Life at high Deborah number (2008, background): “(16), as [13] 〈Σ[u1]〉 = η(λ2 − λ1) 2(1 + De(2)) × (32)”