Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Simulations of Whole Blood in Three-Dimensional Shear Flow

Abstract

Numerical modeling of whole blood still faces great challenges although significant progress has been achieved in recent decades, because of the large differences of physical and geometric properties among blood components, including red blood cells (RBCs), platelets (PLTs) and white blood cells (WBCs). In this work, we develop a three-dimensional (3D) smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) model to study the whole blood in shear flow. The immersed boundary method (IBM) is used to deal with the interaction between the fluid and cells, which provides a possibility to model the RBCs, PLTs and WBCs simultaneously. The deformation of a small capsule, comparable to a PLT in size, is first examined to show the feasibility of SPH model for the PLTs’ behaviors. The motion of a single RBC in shear flow is then studied, and three typical modes, tank-treading, swinging and tumbling motions, are reproduced, which further confirm the reliability of the SPH model. After that, a simulation of the whole blood in shear flow is carried out, in which the margination trend is observed for both PLTs and WBC. This shows the capability of SPH model with IBM for the simulation of whole blood.