Flow of red blood cells through microchannel with a confluence

• Author(s): Leble, Vladimir ; Lima, R. ; Fernandes, Carla S. ; Dias, Ricardo P.
• Date: 2011
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/10015
• Origin: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
• Subject(s): Red blood cells; Velocity profiles; Confluence; Microchannel; Confocal micro-PTV
• Document Type: Conference Object
• Language: English

Description

Micro-visualization techniques have been used to investigate the in vitro blood flow through straight glass capillaries. Although the glass microchannels present certain similarities to in vivo microcirculation, it is also clear that these kind of in vitro experiments differ from microvessels in several respects, such as: elasticity of microvessels, effect of the endothelial surface layer and microvascular networks composed with short irregular vessel segments which are linked by numerous bifurcations and convergences. Thus it was not surprising that several studies on blood flow in glass microtubes and in microvessels have yielded conflicting results with respect to blood viscosity and flow resistance. The main purpose of this work is to improve our understanding about the effect of a confluence on the rheological properties of in vitro blood. The flow behaviour of both pure water (PW) and dextran 40 (Dx40) containing about 14% (14Hct) of human red blood cells (RBCs) will be investigated by means of a confocal micro-PTV system. The experimental measurements obtained will be compared numerically by using the commercial finite element software package POLYFLOW® and different constitutive models to describe the rheology of the blood, namely: constant viscosity, power-law model and Carreau model.