Flagellum Pumping Efficacy in Shear-Thinning Viscoelastic Fluids

Abstract

Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored and relax across a spectrum of length and time scales and the complex fluid can be driven out of its linear response regime. Phenomena not possible in viscous media thereby arise from feedback between the "swimmer" and the complex fluid, making swimming efficiency co-dependent on the propulsion mechanism and fluid properties. Here we parameterize a flagellar motor and filament properties together with elastic relaxation and nonlinear shear-thinning properties of the fluid in a computational immersed boundary model. We then explore swimming efficiency over this parameter space. One exemplary insight is that motor efficiency (measured by the volumetric flow rate) can be boosted vs.\ degraded by moderate vs.\ strong shear-thinning of the viscoelastic environment.