Three-dimensional numerical simulation of the deformation and the aggregation of human red blood cells

Publication Summary

To investigate the deformation and aggregation of the RBCs numerically, mathematical model was established by coupling the interaction between the fluid and the deformable solids. The model includes: 1) A three-dimensional Finite Volume Method solver (CgLes) for incompressible viscous fluid; 2) The combined finite-discrete element method for compute deformation of the RBCs; 3) A JRK model to take account of the adhesion force between different RBCs; and 4) An iterative direct-forcing immersed boundary method to couple the fluid-solid interactions. The computational model was fully verified against published experimental data and the results show good agreement between experimental and simulation results on both the deformation and the adhesion of the RBCs. After verifications of our model, large scale simulations with 49,512 RBCs in a shear flow (with Haematocrit of 45%) were carried out on High Performance Computers. Simulation results were compared with experimental results and the agreement is favourable. Both the experiment and the simulation show uniform distribution of the RBCs under high shear rate (100/s) and large aggregation structures under low shear rate (10/s).