The early stages of clot formation in blood vessels involve platelet adhesion–aggregation. Although these mechanisms have been extensively studied, gaps in their understanding still persist. We have performed detailed in vitro experiments, using the well-known Impact-R device, and developed a numerical model to better describe and understand this phenomenon. Unlike previous studies, we took into account the differential role of pre-activated and non-activated platelets, as well as the three-dimensional nature of the aggregation process. Our investigation reveals that blood albumin is a major parameter limiting platelet aggregate formation in our experiment. Simulations are in very good agreement with observations and provide quantitative estimates of the adhesion and aggregation rates that are hard to measure experimentally. They also provide a value of the effective diffusion of platelets in blood subject to the shear rate produced by the Impact-R.

One contribution of 25 to a Theme Issue 'The virtual physiological human: integrative approaches to computational biomedicine'. Despite the importance of platelets in the formation of a thrombus, their transport in complex flows has not yet been studied in detail. In this paper we simulated red blood cells and platelets to explore their transport behaviour in aneurysmal geometries. We considered two aneurysms with different aspect ratios (AR ¼ 1.0, 2.0) in the presence of fast and slow blood flows (Re ¼ 10, 100), and examined the distributions of the cells. Low velocities in the parent vessel resulted in a large stagnation zone inside the cavity, leaving the initial distribution almost unchanged. In fast flows, an influx of platelets into the aneurysm was observed, leading to an elevated concentration. The connection of the platelet-rich cellfree layer (CFL) with the outer regions of the recirculation zones leads to their increased platelet concentration. These platelet-enhanced recirculation zones produced a diverse distribution of cells inside the aneurysm, for the different aspect ratios. A thin red blood CFL that was occupied by platelets was observed on the top of the wide-necked aneurysm, whereas a high-haematocrit region very close to the vessel wall was present in the narrow-necked case. The simulations revealed that non-trivial distributions of red blood cells and platelets are possible inside aneurysmal geometries, giving rise to several hypotheses on the formation of a thrombus, as well as to the wall weakening and the possible rupture of an aneurysm.

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Many rheological properties of blood, along with transport properties of blood cells can be captured by means of modeling blood through its main constituents, red blood cells (RBCs) and plasma. In the current work, we present a fully resolved two-dimensional model for blood suspension flow, employing a discrete element model (DEM) for RBCs and coupling it to a lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) fluid solver using the immersed boundary method (IBM). We identify an efficient computationally reduced mesoscopic representation of cells and flow, still able to recover essential physics and physiological phenomena. Our model is found to agree quantitatively with experimental findings. The Fåhræus–Lindqvist effect and shear thinning is recovered, while the thickness of the cell-free layer (CFL) matches the observations. In addition, we investigate the tank-treading frequency of a single RBC in shear flow along with the transition from tumbling to tank-treading, also matching experimental data.

The transport of cells and substances in dense suspensions like blood heavily depends on the microstructure and the dynamics arising from their interactions with red blood cells (RBCs). Computer simulations are used to probe into the detailed transport-related characteristics of a blood-like suspension, for a wide range of volume fractions and shear rates. The shear-induced diffusion of RBCs does not follow the established linear scaling with shear rate for higher volume fractions. The properties directly related to RBC deformability -stretching and flow orientation-are not sufficient to explain this departure according to the model of Breedveld, pointing to the dominance of collective effects in the suspension. A cluster size analysis confirms that collective effects dominate high volume fractions, as the mean cluster size is above 2 and the number of "free RBCs" is significantly decreased in denser suspensions. The mean duration of RBC contacts in clusters is increased in the high volume fraction and shear rate cases, showing that these clusters live longer.