Planar Wave Propagation Through a Tapered Flagellated Nanoswimmer

Nanoswimmers are important because of their potential use for the purpose of drug delivery, monitoring, and diagnostics for in vivo biomedical application. They mimic microorganisms and mostly modeled as propelled by beating or rotating flagella. In the vast literature available on modeling of flagellar propulsion, the flagellum is considered constant diameter where as the actual microorganism have tapered flagella. The present study deals with the modeling and simulation of planar wave propagation through a tapered flagellum of a nanoswimmer for a given taper ratio. The performance parameters of velocity and efficiency are compared with the uniform diameter case. Taper diameter modeling of flagellum gives a superior performance by indicating higher velocity and efficiency. The parametric study with respect to the elasticity of the material of the flagellum and its beat frequency is also analyzed. The performance increases with increasing frequency, and the maxima for both velocity and efficiency of the tapered case is reached at a lower elasticity than the uniform case. The maximum efficiency of the taper case is almost double the maxima of the uniform diameter flagellum. The observations in the present study can be utilized while designing artificial flagellum for nanoswimmers and suggests that the tapered flagellum would be a more optimal choice of design as compared to the uniform one of the same volume.