Microscopic-Scale Simulation of Blood Flow in Micro-Circulation Using SPH Method

摘要

We have developed a microscopic blood model based on the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method. In the model, plasma fluid is discretized by SPH particles, and an erythrocyte is expressed by internal SPH particles surrounded by elastic membrane particles. For verifying the model, we numerically analyzed two popular phenomena of blood flow. One is the tank tread motion of an erythrocyte under a constant shear field. The numerical results are agreed well with the experimental data and the tank tread motion of erythrocyte is well reproduced. The other is the axial migration or pinch effect of erythrocytes in Poiseuille flow. From the numerical results, we find that the axial migration effect becomes weaker as the viscosity of internal hemoglobin becomes higher. The reason is because the erythrocyte motion changes from tank-tread one to rigid body rotation (from axial migration to pinch effect) as the hemoglobin becomes thick. From these results, it is confirmed that our blood model based on the SPH method can well express microscopic and rheological properties of erythrocytes.