Numerical Simulation of Red Blood Cells ’ Motion , A Review

The microcirculation of blood plays an important role in human body by providing oxygen and nutrients to the cells and removing carbon dioxide and wastes from the cells. This process is greatly affected by the rheological properties of the Red Blood Cells (RBCs). Changes in the rheological properties of the RBCs are caused by certain human diseases such as malaria and sickle cell diseases. Therefore it is important to understand the motion and deformation mechanism of RBCs in order to diagnose and treat this kind of diseases. Although, many methods have been developed to explore the behaviour of the RBCs in microchannels, they could not explain the deformation mechanism of the RBCs properly. Recently developed Particle Methods are employed to explain the RBCs’ behaviour in microchannels more comprehensively. The main objective of this study is to critically analyze the present methods, used to model the RBC behaviour in microchannels, in order to develop a computationally efficient particle based model to describe the complete behaviour of the RBCs in microchannels accurately and comprehensively.