caa a22 4500 606198679 CHVBK 20210128100935.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150501xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s00348-015-1961-3 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s00348-015-1961-3 Complex fluids affect low-Reynolds number locomotion in a kinematic-dependent manner [Elektronische Daten] [Francisco Godínez, Lyndon Koens, Thomas Montenegro-Johnson, Roberto Zenit, Eric Lauga] In order to improve our understanding of the self-propulsion of swimming microorganisms in viscoelastic fluids, we study experimentally the locomotion of three artificial macro-scale swimmers in Newtonian and synthetic Boger fluids. Each swimmer is made of a rigid head and a tail whose dynamics leads to viscous propulsion. By considering three different kinematics of the tail (helical rigid, planar flexible, and helical flexible) in the same fluid, we demonstrate experimentally that the impact of viscoelasticity on the locomotion speed of the swimmers depends crucially on the kinematics of the tails. Specifically, rigid helical swimmers see no change in their swimming speed, swimmers with planar rod-like flexible tails always swim faster, while those with flexible ribbon-like tails undergoing helical deformation go systematically slower. Our study points to a subtle interplay between tail deformation, actuation, and viscoelastic stresses, and is relevant to the three-dimensional dynamics of flagellated cells in non-Newtonian fluids. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2015 Godínez Francisco Instituto de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510, México, D.F., Mexico aut Koens Lyndon Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, CB3 0WA, Cambridge, UK aut Montenegro-Johnson Thomas Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, CB3 0WA, Cambridge, UK aut Zenit Roberto Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510, México, D.F., Mexico aut Lauga Eric Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, CB3 0WA, Cambridge, UK aut Experiments in Fluids Springer Berlin Heidelberg 56/5(2015-05-01), 1-10 0723-4864 56:5<1 2015 56 348 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-015-1961-3 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-015-1961-3 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Godínez Francisco Instituto de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510, México, D.F., Mexico aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Koens Lyndon Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, CB3 0WA, Cambridge, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Montenegro-Johnson Thomas Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, CB3 0WA, Cambridge, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Zenit Roberto Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510, México, D.F., Mexico aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Lauga Eric Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, CB3 0WA, Cambridge, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Experiments in Fluids Springer Berlin Heidelberg 56/5(2015-05-01), 1-10 0723-4864 56:5<1 2015 56 348