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Helical propulsion in shear-thinning fluids

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2016

Saúl Gómez ,
Francisco A. Godínez ,
Eric Lauga  and
Roberto Zenit Open the ORCID record for Roberto Zenit [Opens in a new window]
Saúl Gómez
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Coyoacán, Ciudad de México 04510, México
Francisco A. Godínez
Affiliation:
Instituto de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Coyoacán, Ciudad de México 04510, México
Eric Lauga*
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0WA, UK
Roberto Zenit*
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Coyoacán, Ciudad de México 04510, México
*
†Email addresses for correspondence: e.lauga@damtp.cam.ac.uk, zenit@unam.mx
†Email addresses for correspondence: e.lauga@damtp.cam.ac.uk, zenit@unam.mx
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Abstract

Swimming micro-organisms often have to propel themselves in complex non-Newtonian fluids. We carry out experiments with self-propelling helical swimmers driven by an externally rotating magnetic field in shear-thinning inelastic fluids. Similarly to swimming in a Newtonian fluid, we obtain for each fluid a locomotion speed that scales linearly with the rotation frequency of the swimmer, but with a prefactor that depends on the power index of the fluid. The fluid is seen to always increase the swimming speed of the helix, up to 50 % faster, and thus the strongest of such type reported to date. The maximum relative increase is for a fluid power index of approximately 0.6. Using simple scalings, we argue that the speed increase is not due directly to the local decrease of the flow viscosity around the helical filament, but hypothesise instead that it originates from confinement-like effect due to viscosity stratification around the swimmer.

JFM classification

Biological Fluid Dynamics: Biological Fluid Dynamics Non-Newtonian Flows: Non-Newtonian Flows Biological Fluid Dynamics: Propulsion

Information

Type
Rapids
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 812 , 10 February 2017 , R3
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Copyright
© 2016 Cambridge University Press 

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