What is it about?
The rheological description of blood under oscillatory flow is of fundamental importance not only for a physiological understanding but also in the design of novel artificial blood pumps that minimize mechanical stimuli that may cause the rupture of RBCs, the so-called hemolysis. We thus numerically investigated the rheology of a suspension of red blood cells (RBCs) for different volume fractions in a wall-bounded, effectively inertialess, small amplitude oscillatory shear (SAOS) flow for a wide range of applied frequencies.
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Why is it important?
This study provides the first conclusive evidence of oscillatory rheology of suspension of RBCs in SAOS. SAOS flow basically impedes the deformation of individual RBCs as well as the magnitude of fluid- membrane interactions than in steady shear flow. Although it is known that the RBC deformation alone is sufficient to give rise to non-Newtonian character, the-called shear-thinning behavior, our results show that the viscoelastic character of the bulk suspension weakly depends on the frequency-modulated deformations or orientations of individual RBCs, but rather depends on combinations of the frequency-dependent amplitude and phase difference.
Perspectives
Our numerical results and quantitative model analysis of the viscoelastic property of dense suspensions of RBCs will be also helpful to build more sophisticated non-Newtonian constitutive laws that consider multi-scale dynamics, and to gain insight not only into the passive cellular flow in physiological systems but also into the design of novel artificial blood pumps.
Dr. Naoki Takeishi
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This page is a summary of: Viscoelasticity of suspension of red blood cells under oscillatory shear flow, Physics of Fluids, April 2024, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0196272.
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