Life at high Deborah number

Details Life at high Deborah number Life at high Deborah number

2009-04-28

arxiv.org/abs/0904.4494v1

Europhys. Lett. (2009) 86, 64001

Physics

Condensed Matter

Soft Condensed Matter

Scientific paper

10.1209/0295-5075/86/64001

In many biological systems, microorganisms swim through complex polymeric fluids, and usually deform the medium at a rate faster than the inverse fluid relaxation time. We address the basic properties of such life at high Deborah number analytically by considering the small-amplitude swimming of a body in an arbitrary complex fluid. Using asymptotic analysis and differential geometry, we show that for a given swimming gait, the time-averaged leading-order swimming kinematics of the body can be expressed as an integral equation on the solution to a series of simpler Newtonian problems. We then use our results to demonstrate that Purcell's scallop theorem, which states that time-reversible body motion cannot be used for locomotion in a Newtonian fluid, breaks down in polymeric fluid environments.

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