Cell-free layer in a Couette flow
The example below illustrates the flow of a red blood cell (RBC) sample subjected to a constant shear rate of 250 s⁻¹ at a haematocrit of 12%. The cell-free layer above a plain wall is visible in the bottom-left inset. The viscosity ratio between the cell cytoplasm and the suspending plasma is 5, which is the typical physiological value often overlooked in literature simulations. Cell-cell and cell-wall interactions are numerically modelled by introducing a repulsive force based on the Lennard-Jones potential, acting over a distance on the order of the mesh resolution.
