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Controlled Microfluidic Environment for Dynamic Investigation of Red Blood Cell Aggregation
Published on: June 4, 2015
Particle method for computer simulation of red blood cell motion in blood flow
Ken-ichi Tsubota1, Shigeo Wada, Takami Yamaguchi
1Department of Bioengineering and Robotics, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-01 Aoba, Sendai 980-8579, Japan. tsubota@pfsl.mech.tohoku.ac.jp
Abstract:
A particle method for the computer simulation of blood flow was proposed to analyze the motion of a deformable red blood cell (RBC) in flowing blood plasma. The RBC and plasma were discretized by particles that have the characteristics of an elastic membrane and a viscous fluid, respectively. The membrane particles were connected to their neighboring membrane particles by springs, and the motion of the particles was determined on the basis of the minimum energy principle. The incompressible flow of plasma that was expressed by the motion of the fluid particles was determined by the moving-particle semi-implicit (MPS) method. The RBC motion and plasma flow were weakly coupled. The two-dimensional simulation of blood flow between parallel plates demonstrated the capability of the proposed method to express the blood flow phenomena observed in experiments, such as the downstream motion of the RBC and the deformation of the RBC into a parachute shape.
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