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Micro-organisms and artificial microswimmers often move in biological fluids displaying complex rheological behaviors, including viscoelasticity and shear-thinning viscosity. A comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of different swimming gaits in various types of complex fluids remains elusive. The squirmer model has been commonly used to represent different types of swimmers and probe the effects of different types of complex rheology on locomotion. While many studies focused only on squirmers with surface velocities in the polar direction, a recent study has revealed that a squirmer with swirling motion can swim faster in a viscoelastic fluid than in Newtonian fluids [Binagia et al., J. Fluid Mech. 900, A4, (2020)]. Here, we consider a similar setup but focus on the sole effect due to shear-thinning viscosity. We use asymptotic analysis and numerical simulations to examine how the swirling flow affects the swimming performance of a squirmer in a shear-thinning but inelastic fluid described by the Carreau constitutive equation. Our results show that the swirling flow can either increase or decrease the speed of the squirmer depending on the Carreau number. In contrast to swimming in a viscoelastic fluid, the speed of a swirling squirmer in a shear-thinning fluid does not go beyond the Newtonian value in a wide range of parameters considered. We also elucidate how the coupling of the azimuthal flow with shear-thinning viscosity can produce the rotational motion of a swirling pusher or puller.

We theoretically investigate the deformation of a viscous drop covered with non-diffusing insoluble surfactant under a uniform DC electric field. At equilibrium, surfactant immobilizes the spheroidal drop surface and completely suppresses the fluid flow. In this work we focus on the equilibrium electro-deformation of a surfactant-laden drop in the leaky dielectric framework by developing (1) a second-order small-deformation analysis and (2) a spheroidal model for a highly deformed (prolate or oblate) drop. Both models are compared against experimental data and numerical simulation results in the literature. Our analysis shows how the existence of equilibrium spheroidal drop depends on the permittivity ratio, conductivity ratio, surfactant coverage, and the elasticity number. Furthermore, the spheroidal model highlights that differences between surfactant effects, such as tip stretching and surface dilution effects, are greatly amplified at large surfactant coverage and high electric capillary number. These surfactant effects are well captured in the spheroidal model, but cannot be described in the second-order small-deformation theory.