Numerical Simulation of Blood Cell Motion in a Simple Shear Flow

Detailed knowledge on the motion of blood cells flowing in micro-channels under simple shear flow and the influence of blood flow is essential to provide a better understanding on the blood rheological properties and blood cell aggregation. The microscopic behavior of red blood cell (RBCs) is numerically investigated using a fluid-structure interaction (FSI) method based on the Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) approach and the dynamic mesh method (smoothing and remeshing) in FLUENT (ANSYS Inc., USA). The employed FSI method could be applied to the motions and deformations of a single blood cell and multiple blood cells, and the primary thrombogenesis caused by platelet aggregation. It is expected that, combined with a sophisticated large-scale computational technique, the simulation method will be useful for understanding the overall properties of blood flow from blood cellular level (microscopic) to the resulting rheological properties of blood as a mass (macroscopic).