Shape changes and motion of a vesicle in a fluid using a lattice Boltzmann model

¹  Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences - P.O. Box 800-204, Shanghai 201800, China
²  Department of information material science and engineering, Guilin University of Electronic Technology Guilin 541004, China
³  Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences - Beijing 100080, China
⁴  EXA Corporation - 3 Burlington Woods Drive, Burlington, MA 01803, USA

Corresponding authors: hbli@guet.edu.cn fanghaiping@sinap.ac.cn

Received: 22 August 2007
Accepted: 8 January 2008

Abstract

To study erythrocyte deformation and movement in fluid flows, the membrane bending rigidity and elastic modulus are incorporated with a lattice Boltzmann simulation. The stable static biconcave shape is found to resist pathological membrane changes, and the erythrocyte exhibits tank tread-like motion with a highly flattened shape in a shear flow. With intrinsically parallel dynamics, this lattice Boltzmann method may apply to both single and multi-vesicle suspension and complex open membranes in various fluid flows for a wide range of Reynolds numbers.