Comment on "Locomotion of a microorganism in weakly viscoelastic liquids".
editorial · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27967105.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
We point out, and show the implications of resolving, an apparent conceptual difficulty in a recent article by De Corato et al. [Phys. Rev. E 92, 053008 (2015)PLEEE81539-375510.1103/PhysRevE.92.053008] on the locomotion of certain microorganisms in a second-grade fluid. The difficulty arises due to the assumption that α_{1}<0, where α_{1} is the first normal stress modulus of the (non-Newtonian) liquid, was chosen for this study. In particular, this choice of sign for α_{1} is inconsistent with thermodynamics, and as such casts considerable doubt on De Corato et al.'s assumption regarding the existence of a steady-state solution of the equations of motion of the fluid.