Elucidating the rheological implications of adding particles in blood

Abstract

Graphical abstract In the past few decades, nanotechnology has been employed to provide breakthroughs in the diagnosis and treatment of several diseases using drug-carrying particles (DCPs). In such an endeavor, the optimal design of DCPs is paramount, which necessitates the use of an accurate and trustworthy constitutive model in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulators. We herein introduce a continuum model for elaborating on the rheological implications of adding particles in blood. The model is developed using non-equilibrium thermodynamics to guarantee thermodynamic admissibility. Red blood cells are modeled as deformed droplets with a constant volume that are able to aggregate, whereas particles are considered rigid spheroids. The model predictions are compared favorably against rheological data for both spherical and non-spherical particles immersed in non-aggregating blood. It is expected that the use of this model will allow for the testing of DCPs in virtual patients and for their tailor-design in treating various diseases. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00397-021-01289-x.

Modelling of Elongational Flow of HDPE Melts by Hierarchical Multi-Mode Molecular Stress Function Model

“…As already mentioned, the minor maxima observed in the extensional data ( Figure 4 ) are not true maxima and they are rather signs of inhomogeneous deformation (i.e., necking) at high strains as opposed to being a material property of HDPE (for more detail, see [ 40 , 41 , 42 ]). Using the HMMSF model, and considering the fact that the occurrence of stress overshoots (maxima) is unlikely in linear melt with only traces of LCB, we can define M&A’s MSHF (Equation (9)) as the ratio between the steady-state elongational viscosity and the LVE, , as both values are readily accessible in the IRIS software ( Figure 4 ).…”