Vesicle tumbling inhibited by inertia

Aymen Laadhari (1) , Pierre Saramito (1) , Chaouqi Misbah (2)

1 LJK - Laboratoire Jean Kuntzmann
2 LSP - Laboratoire de Spectrométrie Physique

Vesicles under flow constitute a model system for studying red blood cells (RBCs) dynamics and blood rheology. In the blood circulatory system the Reynolds number (at the scale of the RBC) may attain few unities. We develop a numerical method based on the the level set approach and solve the fluid/membrane coupling by using an adaptative finite element technique. We find that inertia can destroy completely the vesicle tumbling motion obtained in the Stokes regime. We analyze in details this phenomenon and discuss some of the far reaching consequences.

Mots clés: biophysics; red blood cell; vesicle; stability; fluid mechanics

Domaines: Biophysique [physics.bio-ph]; Dynamique des Fluides [physics.flu-dyn]; Biomécanique [physics.med-ph]; Biomécanique [physics.med-ph]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Equations aux dérivées partielles [math.AP]

Aymen Laadhari, Pierre Saramito, Chaouqi Misbah. Vesicle tumbling inhibited by inertia. 2011. ⟨hal-00604401v1⟩