Swimming in a two-fluid model

In this talk, we consider a two-fluid model to investigate the motion of a micro-swimmer in heterogeneous environments. We extend previous analyses to account for the effect of porosity and study its influence on the propulsion speed and the surrounding flow. Our exact solution allows us to characterize the flow fields and their spatial decay analytically. The setup of the theoretical model can be relevant to different biological scenarios, including a swimming cell surrounded by an extracellular matrix, and a bacterium enclosed by a de-gelled region during its invasion into mucus layers protecting epithelial cells.