A simplified model for red cell dynamics in small blood vessels

Abstract

A simple mechanism for the confinement of red cells in the middle of narrow blood vessels is proposed. In the presence of a quadratic shear, red cells deform in such a way to loose fore-aft symmetry and to achieve a fixed orientation with respect to the flow. This leads to a drift away from the vessel walls, when the vessel diameter goes below a critical value depending on the viscoelastic properties and the dimensions of the cell.

7 pages, 3 figures; to be published on Phys. Rev. Lett.; various modifications to text and figures

References in corpus (2)

• The lift on a tank-treading ellipsoidal cell in a bounded shear flow
• The role of tank-treading motions in the transverse migration of a spheroidal vesicle in a shear flow

Cited by in corpus (7)

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• The behavior of closed inextensible membranes in linear and quadratic shear flows
• Spatio-temporal dynamics of dilute red blood cell suspensions in a microchannel flow at low Reynolds number
• Sedimentation of Oblate Ellipsoids at low and Moderate Reynolds numbers
• Capillary imbibition of monodisperse emulsions in confined microfluidic channels
• Anisotropic short-range attractions precisely model branched erythrocyte aggregates