2014/09/09 by Othmane Aouane, Marine Thiébaud, Marine Thiebaud +4
Chemical Engineering · Chemistry · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Blood properties and coagulation #Chemistry #Erythrocyte Function and Pathophysiology #Flow (mathematics) #Hagen–Poiseuille equation #Laminar flow #Mechanics #Membrane #Physics #Reynolds number #Rheology and Fluid Dynamics Studies #Turbulence #Vesicle #cond-mat.soft #nlin.CD #physics.bio-ph #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.90.033011
acceptd for Phys. Rev. E
arxiv created 2014/09/09 · openalex publication_date 2014/09/18 · arxiv updated 2015/06/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Red blood cells (RBCs) are the major component of blood, and the flow of blood is dictated by that of RBCs. We employ vesicles, which consist of closed bilayer membranes enclosing a fluid, as a model system to study the behavior of RBCs under a confined Poiseuille flow. We extensively explore two main parameters: (i) the degree of confinement of vesicles within the channel and (ii) the flow strength. Rich and complex dynamics for vesicles are revealed, ranging from steady-state shapes (in the form of parachute and slipper shapes) to chaotic dynamics of shape. Chaos occurs through a cascade of multiple periodic oscillations of the vesicle shape. We summarize our results in a phase diagram in the parameter plane (degree of confinement and flow strength). This finding highlights the level of complexity of a flowing vesicle in the small Reynolds number where the flow is laminar in the absence of vesicles and can be rendered turbulent due to elasticity of vesicles.