2024/09/23 by Anirudh Venkatesh, Venkatesh, Anirudh, Vivek Narsimhan +1 · 2 citations
Chemical Engineering · Medicine · #Blood properties and coagulation #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Rheology and Fluid Dynamics Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.15102
openalex publication_date 2024/09/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
In biology, cells undergo deformations under the action of flow caused by the fluid surrounding them. These flows lead to shape changes and instabilities that have been explored in detail for single component vesicles. However, cell membranes are often multi-component in nature, made up of multiple phospholipids and cholesterol mixtures that give rise to interesting thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. Our work analyses linear flows around a multi-component vesicle using a small-deformation theory based on vector and scalar spherical harmonics. We set up the problem by laying out the governing momentum equations and the traction balance arising from the phase separation and bending. These equations are solved along with a Cahn-Hilliard equation that governs the coarsening dynamics of the phospholipid-cholesterol mixture. We provide a detailed analysis of the vesicle dynamics (e.g., tumbling, breathing, tank-treading, swinging, and phase treading) in two regimes -- when flow is faster than coarsening dynamics (Peclet number Pe ≫ 1) and when the two time scales are comparable (Pe ∼ O(1)) -- and provide a discussion on when these behaviours occur. The analysis aims to provide an experimentalist with important insights pertaining to the phase separation dynamics and their effect on the deformation dynamics of a vesicle.