2018/11/27 by Xiao Zhang, Zhang, Xiao, Wilbur A. Lam +3
Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Blood properties and coagulation #Erythrocyte Function and Pathophysiology #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Hemoglobinopathies and Related Disorders #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1811.11207
21 pages, 12 figures
arxiv created 2018/11/27 · openalex publication_date 2018/11/27 · arxiv updated 2018/11/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This work investigates the motion of neutrally-buoyant, slightly deformable straight and curved prolate capsules in unbounded simple shear flow at zero Reynolds number using direct simulations. The curved capsules serve as a model for the typical crescent-shaped sickle red blood cells in sickle cell disease (SCD). The effects of deformability and curvature on the dynamics are revealed. We show that with low deformability, straight prolate spheroidal capsules tumble in the shear plane as their unique asymptotically stable orbit, which contrasts with that for rigid spheroids where infinitely many neutrally stable Jeffery orbits exist. The dynamics of curved prolate capsules are more complicated due to a combined effect of deformability and curvature. At short times, depending on the initial orientation, slightly deformable curved prolate capsules exhibit either a Jeffery-like motion such as tumbling or kayaking, or a non-Jeffery-like behavior in which the end-to-end vector of the capsule crosses the shear-gradient plane back and forth. At long times, however, a Jeffery-like quasi-periodic orbit is taken regardless of the initial orientation. We further show that the average of the long-time trajectory can be well approximated using the analytical solution for Jeffery orbits with an effective orbit constant C_\textnormaleff and aspect ratio ℓ_\textnormaleff. As the capsule becomes more deformable or curved, C_\textnormaleff decreases, indicating a shift of the orbit towards log-rolling motion, while ℓ_\textnormaleff increases weakly as the degree of curvature increases but shows negligible dependency on deformability. As cell deformability, cell shape, and cell-cell interactions are all pathologically altered in blood disorders such as SCD, these results will have clear implications on improving our understanding of the pathophysiology of hematologic disease.