Understanding Microstructure Interactions within Blood Through Rheology

Blood is a complex fluid composed of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets suspended in an aqueous plasma phase.  Within the plasma, there are several dissolved proteins which facilitate interactions between adjacent red blood cells.  At low shear rates, the red blood cells will reversibly form coin stacks known as rouleaux, while at high shear rates, once the aggregates have broken up, the individual red blood cells will deform and undergo tank treading motion.  These interactions lead to a variety of interesting rheological phenomena including a shear thinning behavior under steady shear, a nonzero yield stress, viscoelasticity, and thixotropy.  Moreover, a number of diseases, such as diabetes [1], high blood pressure [2], and sickle cell anemia [3], have been linked to changes in the rheology of blood.  Consequently, there is potential in using blood rheology as a diagnostics tool to detect early signs for various diseases.

We aim to better understand the rheology of blood through a combination of carefully obtained transient measurements following a set protocol and a multidimensional, microstructure based modeling approach.  The implementation of such models has led to an improved understanding of the governing contributions to the rheological behavior and offered insight into tests that can best characterize the blood samples.  Furthermore, these models can be used to improve blood flow simulations [4] which have applications ranging from drug delivery to bypass surgery to treat stenosis.

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References

[1] Le Devehat C, Vimeux M, Khodabandehlou T. Blood rheology in patients with diabetes mellitus. Clin Hemorheol Microcirc. 2004;30(3-4):297-300.

[2] Connes P, Alexy T, Detterich J, Romana M, Hardy-Dessources MD, Ballas SK. The role of blood rheology in sickle cell disease. Blood Rev. 2016;30(2):111-8. doi: 10.1016/j.blre.2015.08.005.

[3] Shi YD, Artmann G, Agosti R, Longhini E. A modified Casson equation to characterize blood rheology for hypertension. Clin Hemorheol Microcirc. 1998;19(2):115-27.

[4] Apostolidis AJ, Moyer AP, Beris AN. Non-Newtonian effects in simulations of coronary arterial blood flow. J Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 2016;233:155-64. doi: 10.1016/j.jnnfm.2016.03.008.

Publications

[1] JS Horner, MJ Armstrong, NJ Wagner, and AN Beris, “Investigation of blood rheology under steady and unidirectional large amplitude oscillatory shear,” Journal of Rheology, 62(2), 577-591 (2018) doi: 10.1122/1.5017623.

[2] M Armstrong, J Horner, M Clark, M Deegan, T Hill, C Keith, and L Mooradian, “Evaluating rheological models for human blood using steady state, transient, and oscillatory shear predictions,” Rheologica Acta, 57(11), 705-728 (2018) doi: 10.1007/s00397-018-1109-5.

[3] JS. Horner, AN Beris, DS Woulfe, and NJ Wagner, “Effects of ex vivo aging and storage temperature on blood viscosity,” Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation, 70(2), 155-172 (2018) doi: 10.3233/CH-170330.