A hybrid continuum—coarse-grained modeling of red blood cell membrane

Jinming Lyu (1) , Paul G. Chen (1) , Gwenn Boedec (2) , Marc Leonetti (3) , Marc Jaeger (1)

1 M2P2 - Laboratoire de Mécanique, Modélisation et Procédés Propres
2 IRPHE - Institut de Recherche sur les Phénomènes Hors Equilibre
3 LRP - Laboratoire Rhéologie et Procédés

The red blood cell (RBC) membrane is a composite structure, consisting of a fluid lipid bilayer and an underlying membrane-associated cytoskeleton. Both continuum and particle-based coarse-grained RBC models make use of a set of vertices connected by edges to represent the RBC membrane, which can be seen as a triangular surface mesh for the former and a spring network for the latter. We present a modeling approach combining an existing continuum vesicle model with a coarse-grained model for the cytoskeleton. The finitely extensible nonlinear elastic (FENE) spring force law in combination with a repulsive force defined as a power function (POW), called FENE-POW, is used to describe the elastic properties of the RBC membrane. The mechanical interaction between the lipid bilayer and the cytoskeleton is explicitly computed and incorporated into the vesicle model. We present three simulation examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of this hybrid continuum–coarse-grained model for the study of RBCs in fluid flows. This poster presentation is based on our recent paper (Lyu et al. 2018).

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Jinming Lyu, Paul G. Chen, Gwenn Boedec, Marc Leonetti, Marc Jaeger. A hybrid continuum—coarse-grained modeling of red blood cell membrane. HemPhys: 1st International School on HemoPhysics, May 2018, Montpellier, France. ⟨hal-01797994⟩