2025/12/06 by Qi, Kai, Zou, Qingzhi, Pagonabarraga, Ignacio · 1 citation
Engineering · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Blood properties and coagulation #Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Micro and Nano Robotics #Microfluidic and Bio-sensing Technologies #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.06233
openalex publication_date 2025/12/06 · openalex created_date 2025/12/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Microorganisms inhabit viscoelastic environments, where their locomotion can deform polymers and trigger local complex viscoelastic responses. However, a systematic approach to quantify such responses remains lacking. Here, we propose a protocol that maps the shear effect induced by an active agent to oscillatory shear rheometry. The central idea is to establish a correspondence between the mean shear rate generated by swimming and that produced by an oscillating plate. In this mapping, the swimming velocity and active stress are translated into an effective oscillation frequency and strain amplitude. The resulting viscoelastic response can then be evaluated by standard oscillatory rheometry. The protocol is validated using lattice Boltzmann simulations of a squirmer embedded in polymer solutions. Our framework is generic and can be naturally extended to active microrheology, providing a pathway to quantify swimmer-induced viscoelasticity.