Predicting human blood viscosity in silico

Journal Article · Tue Jul 05 04:00:00 EDT 2011 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1101210108· OSTI ID:1021820

Fedosov, Dmitry A. ^[1]; Pan, Wenxiao ^[2]; Caswell, Bruce ^[3]; Gompper, Gerhard ^[4]; Karniadakis, George E. ^[3]

---

1. Inst. of Complex Systems and Inst. for Advanced Simulation, Julich (Germany); Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)
2. Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States); Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
3. Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)
4. Inst. of Complex Systems and Inst. for Advanced Simulation, Julich (Germany)

Cellular suspensions such as blood are a part of living organisms and their rheological and flow characteristics determine and affect majority of vital functions. The rheological and flow properties of cell suspensions are determined by collective dynamics of cells, their structure or arrangement, cell properties and interactions. We study these relations for blood in silico using a mesoscopic particle-based method and two different models (multi-scale/low-dimensional) of red blood cells. The models yield accurate quantitative predictions of the dependence of blood viscosity on shear rate and hematocrit. We explicitly model cell aggregation interactions and demonstrate the formation of reversible rouleaux structures resulting in a tremendous increase of blood viscosity at low shear rates and yield stress, in agreement with experiments. The non-Newtonian behavior of such cell suspensions (e.g., shear thinning, yield stress) is analyzed and related to the suspension’s microstructure, deformation and dynamics of single cells. We provide the flrst quantitative estimates of normal stress differences and magnitude of aggregation forces in blood. Finally, the flexibility of the cell models allows them to be employed for quantitative analysis of a much wider class of complex fluids including cell, capsule, and vesicle suspensions.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1021820
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA--80164; KJ0403000
• Journal Information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Journal Name: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Journal Issue: 29 Vol. 108; ISSN 0027-8424; ISSN PNASA6
• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (United States)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
BLOOD
BLOOD CELLS
DEFORMATION
FLEXIBILITY
MICROSTRUCTURE
SHEAR
VISCOSITY