Numerical study of red blood cell motion and deformation through a michrochannel using lattice Boltzmann-immersed boundary method

In this research, motion and deformation of both healthy and sick red blood cell (RBC) are simulated in a vessel with and without stenosis for incompressible and viscous internal flow using the combined lattice Boltzmann-immersed boundary method. The surface of RBC is considered to be a deformable immersed body in the fluid flow. The RBC membrane is represented in Lagrangian coordinates, while the fluid flow field is discretized by a uniform and fixed Eulerian mesh. The interaction of the fluid and RBC is modeled using an appropriate form of the Dirac delta function. Two geometrically different channels, namely, a simple channel and a channel with a stenosis, are considered. In the cases, when the RBC is placed on the symmetry axis of the channel, they continue to move and deform without any lift force and rotation induced. The healthy RBC always shows more deformation along the channel in comparison by sick one. The obtained results show that a sick RBC cannot pass the constricted area and become constricted, so that it causes serious problems for human body. The present results have been compared with the available experimental and numerical results which show good agreements.

.Lattice Boltzmann, Immersed boundary, Red blood cell, Constriction, Numerical simulation