Traditional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can model the flow of arterial blood by representing it as a single, non-Newtonian liquid. However, for a range of problems in the veinule scale microcirculation such as drug delivery and margination, it is important to model individual cells explicitly and CFD is difficult to apply. For researchers studying phenomena such as margination and the initiation of the immune response, this is a problem.
We propose an efficient method for modelling a large number of different, mutually immiscible (non-coallescing) fluids, based on the lattice Boltzmann (lB) method.
LB is an established alternative to CFD methods and has particular advantages for certain applications, such as the modelling of fluid-fluid interfaces. In the model presented here, cells are represented as polydisperse, deformable, mutually immiscible liquid droplets advected in surrounding plasma. Our method allows control over flow parameters such as the relative viscosities, Reynolds number, relative surface tension and hence wetting. Importantly, our method as presented here recovers the constraint of constant interfacial area, appropriate for representing red blood cells.
Results are presented which demonstrate that the scheme should be a valuable tool for modelling biological flows.