Dynamics of suspensions of red blood cells
YALES2BIO has now the capability to predict the dynamics of suspensions of red blood cells. The first example below corresponds to the flow of a suspension of red blood cells in a square channel of cross section 20 microns x 20 microns. The hematocrit (volume fraction of red blood cells) is 20%, which is typical of what is encountered in the microcirculation. The viscosity ratio between the cytoplasm of the cells and the plasma in which they are suspended is 5, the typical physiological value. The cells surface is colored by the local mean curvature of the membrane. In the second example, a suspension of red blood cells flows through a bifurcation to illustrate the capability of YALES2BIO to represent networks of microchannels. In both cases, the cell-cell and cell-wall interactions are numerically handled by introducing a repulsive force based on the Lennard-Jones potential acting on a distance of order the mesh resolution.
