Red blood cells (RBCs) have highly deformable viscoelastic membranes exhibiting complex rheological response and rich hydrodynamic behavior governed by special elastic and bending properties and by the external/internal fluid and membrane viscosities. We present a multiscale RBC model that is able to predict RBC mechanics, rheology, and dynamics in agreement with experiments. Based on an analytic theory, the modeled membrane properties can be uniquely related to the experimentally established RBC macroscopic properties without any adjustment of parameters. The RBC linear and nonlinear elastic deformations match those obtained in optical-tweezers experiments. The rheological properties of the membrane are compared with those obtained in optical magnetic twisting cytometry, membrane thermal fluctuations, and creep followed by cell recovery. The dynamics of RBCs in shear and Poiseuille flows is tested against experiments and theoretical predictions, and the applicability of the latter is discussed. Our findings clearly indicate that a purely elastic model for the membrane cannot accurately represent the RBC's rheological properties and its dynamics, and therefore accurate modeling of a viscoelastic membrane is necessary.

We present a rigorous procedure to derive coarse-grained red blood cell (RBC) models, which yield accurate mechanical response. Based on a semi-analytic theory the linear and nonlinear elastic properties of healthy and infected RBCs in malaria can be matched with those obtained in optical tweezers stretching experiments. The present analysis predicts correctly the membrane Young’s modulus in contrast to about 50% error in predictions by previous models. In addition, we develop a stress-free model which avoids a number of pitfalls of existing RBC models, such as non-smooth or poorly controlled equilibrium shape and dependence of the mechanical properties on the initial triangulation quality. Here we employ dissipative particle dynamics for the implementation but the proposed model is general and suitable for use in many existing continuum and particle-based numerical methods.

The viscosity of blood has long been used as an indicator in the understanding and treatment of disease, and the advent of modern viscometers allows its measurement with ever-improving clinical convenience. However, these advances have not been matched by theoretical developments that can yield a quantitative understanding of blood's microrheology and its possible connection to relevant biomolecules (e.g., fibrinogen). Using coarse-grained molecular dynamics and two different red blood cell models, we accurately predict the dependence of blood viscosity on shear rate and hematocrit. We explicitly represent cell-cell interactions and identify the types and sizes of reversible rouleaux structures that yield a tremendous increase of blood viscosity at low shear rates. We also present the first quantitative estimates of the magnitude of adhesive forces between red cells. In addition, our simulations support the hypothesis, previously deduced from experiments, of yield stress as an indicator of cell aggregation. This non-Newtonian behavior is analyzed and related to the suspension's microstructure, deformation, and dynamics of single red blood cells. The most complex cell dynamics occurs in the intermediate shear rate regime, where individual cells experience severe deformation and transient folded conformations. The generality of these cell models together with single-cell measurements points to the future prediction of blood-viscosity anomalies and the corresponding microstructures associated with various diseases (e.g., malaria, AIDS, and diabetes mellitus). The models can easily be adapted to tune the properties of a much wider class of complex fluids including capsule and vesicle suspensions.blood rheology | blood modeling | shear thinning | aggregation force | dissipative particle dynamics R heological and material properties of cell, capsule, and vesicle suspensions have many applications in medicine, biology, engineering, and materials science. One of the main examples of such suspensions is blood, which consists of RBCs, predominant by volume, and a small fraction of other cells and proteins suspended in the plasma. Understanding blood flow and its relation to cellular properties and interactions may lead to advances in biomedical applications (e.g., drug delivery, blood substitutes). Moreover, a change in blood rheological and flow properties is often associated with hematological diseases or disorders (e.g., sickle-cell anemia, malaria), and therefore the viscosity of blood has long been used as an indicator in the understanding and treatment of disease.Modern rheometry techniques and instruments yield reliable measurements of macroscopic properties of cell suspensions with ever-improving convenience-for example, the bulk properties of blood measured in various laboratories (1-6). Virtually all bloodviscosity measurements are necessarily in vitro, and before newly drawn blood is introduced into a viscometer it must at least be stabilized with an anticoagulant, which is then called "whole blood." Under flow...