Swimming microorganisms often have to propel in complex, non-Newtonian fluids. We carry out experiments with self-propelling helical swimmers driven by an externally rotating magnetic field in shear-thinning, inelastic fluids. Similarly to swimming in a Newtonian fluid, we obtain for each fluid a locomotion speed which scales linearly with the rotation frequency of the swimmer, but with a prefactor which depends on the power index of the fluid. The fluid is seen to always increase the swimming speed of the helix, up to 50% faster and thus the strongest of such type reported to date. The maximum relative increase for a fluid power index of around 0.6. Using simple scalings, we argue that the speed increase is not due to the local decrease of the flow viscosity around the helical filament but hypothesise instead that it originates from confinement-like effect due to viscosity stratification around the swimmer

Viscoelastic fluids impact the locomotion of swimming microorganisms and can be harnessed to devise new types of self-propelling devices. Here we report on experiments demonstrating the use of normal stress differences for propulsion. Rigid dumbbells are rotated by an external magnetic field along their axis of symmetry in a Boger fluid. When the dumbbell is asymmetric (snowman geometry), non-Newtonian normal stress differences lead to net propulsion in the direction of the smaller sphere. The use of a simple model allows to rationalise the experimental results and to predict the dependence of the snowman swimming speed on the size ratio between the two spheres.

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Summary In this paper, we study a supercapacitor model represented by an equivalent RC circuit considering five different types of derivatives: Caputo, Caputo‐Fabrizio, and Atangana‐Baleanu fractional derivatives and the conformable and integer‐order derivatives. A set of experimental data from six commercial supercapacitors are used to estimate the parameter values for each derivative model by applying interior point optimization. The results show that the most accurate approach is achieved with the conformable derivative followed by the Caputo fractional derivative.

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A novel device to produce a rotating magnetic field was designed, constructed, and tested. The system consists of a Helmholtz coil pair which is mechanically coupled to a dc electric motor whose angular velocity is controlled. The coil pair generates a uniform magnetic field; the whole system is rotated maintaining the coils energized using brushes. The magnetic field strength is uniform (≈5.8 mT) for a workspace of about 100 mm along the rotation axis. The system remains free of undesirable high amplitude mechanical vibrations for rotation frequencies below 10 Hz. We verified the performance of the apparatus by conducting experiments with magnetic swimmers.

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Painters often acquire a deep empirical knowledge of the way in which paints and inks behave. Through experimentation and practice, they can control the way in which fluids move and deform to create textures and images. David Alfaro Siqueiros, a recognized Mexican muralist, invented an accidental painting technique to create new and unexpected textures. By pouring layers of paint of different colors on a horizontal surface, the paints infiltrate into each other creating patterns of aesthetic value. In this investigation, we reproduce the technique in a controlled manner. We found that for the correct color combination, the dual viscous layer becomes Rayleigh-Taylor unstable: the density mismatch of the two color paints drives the formation of a spotted pattern. Experiments and a linear instability analysis were conducted to understand the properties of the process. We also argue that this flow configuration can be used to study the linear properties of this instability.