Amplitude transitions of swimmers and flexors in viscoelastic fluids

In both theoretical and experimental studies of the effect of fluid elasticity on micro-organism swimming, very different behavior has been observed for small and large amplitude strokes. We present simulations of an undulatory swimmer in an Oldroyd-B fluid and show that the resulting viscoelastic stresses are a nonlinear function of the amplitude. Specifically, there appears to be an amplitude dependent transition that is key to obtaining a speed-up over the Newtonian swimming speed. To understand the physical mechanism of the transition, we examine the stresses in a time-symmetric oscillatory bending beam, or flexor. We compare the flow in a neighborhood of the flexor tips with a large-amplitude oscillatory extensional flow, and we see similar amplitude dependent transitions. We relate these transitions to observed speed-ups in viscoelastic swimmers.