Steady free fall of one-dimensional bodies in a hyperviscous fluid at low Reynolds number

The paper is devoted to the study of the motion of one-dimensional rigid bodies during a free fall in a quasi-Newtonian hyperviscous fluid at low Reynolds number. We show the existence of a steady solution and furnish sufficient conditions on the geometry of the body in order to get purely translational motions. Such conditions are based on a generalized version of the so-called Reciprocal Theorem for fluids.