Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-25-2021
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Abstract
Particle–wall interactions have broad biological and technological applications. In particular, some artificial microswimmers capitalize on their translation–rotation coupling near a wall to generate directed propulsion. Emerging biomedical applications of these microswimmers in complex biological fluids prompt questions on the impact of non-Newtonian rheology on their propulsion. In this work, we report some intriguing effects of shear-thinning rheology, a ubiquitous non-Newtonian behaviour of biological fluids, on the translation–rotation coupling of a particle near a wall. One particularly interesting feature revealed here is that the wall-induced translation by rotation can occur in a direction opposite to what might be intuitively expected for an object rolling on a solid substrate. We elucidate the underlying physical mechanism and discuss its implications on the design of micromachines and bacterial motion near walls in complex fluids.
Recommended Citation
Chen, Y., Demir, E., Gao, W., Young, Y.-N., & Pak, O. S. (2021). Wall-induced translation of a rotating particle in a shear-thinning fluid. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 927, R2. https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2021.775
Comments
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.