Computational study of blood flow in microchannels

Using the Theory of Interacting Continua (Mixture Theory), blood is modeled as a two-component mixture, namely, plasma and red blood cells (RBCs). The plasma is assumed to behave as a Newtonian fluid and the RBCs are modeled as a suspension of rigid spherical particles with a viscosity dependent on the shear-rate and the hematocrit. The drag and lift forces are implemented through RBC–plasma interaction forces. We solve the governing equations using the OpenFOAM, an open source CFD code for two phase flow simulations. The two-phase simulations predict RBC depletion in the corner of a sudden expansion channel. The RBC depletion length is found to increase with decreasing the flow rate and the hematocrit. There is a qualitatively good agreement between the simulation results and the experimental data.