The hemodynamic interactions of red blood cells (RBCs) in a microcapillary flow are investigated in this paper. This kind of interaction is considered as the non-contact mutual interaction of cells, which is important in the suspension flow of blood, but not sufficiently understood. The distributed Lagrange multiplier/fictitious domain method in the lattice Boltzmann framework is used to solve the suspension of the RBCs. The modification of the flow due to the cells, the dependence of the cell deformation on the flow and the cell-cell interaction via the fluid are discussed. It is revealed that the long-range hydrodynamic interaction with a long interacting distance, more than about 5 times of the RBC equivalent radius, mainly has effect on the rheology properties of the suspension, such as the mean velocity, and the short-range interaction is sensitive to the shape of the cell in the microcapillary flow. The flow velocity around the cell plays a key role in the cell deformation. In the current configuration of the flow and cells, the cells repel each other along the capillary.

中文翻译：

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微毛细血管血流中红细胞血流动力学相互作用的数值模拟

本文研究了微毛细血管血流中红细胞（RBC）的血液动力学相互作用。这种相互作用被认为是细胞的非接触性相互作用，这在血液的悬浮液中很重要，但还没有得到足够的了解。格子Boltzmann框架中的分布式Lagrange乘子/虚拟域方法用于解决RBC的悬浮问题。讨论了由于细胞引起的流动改变，细胞变形对流动的依赖性以及经由流体的细胞间相互作用。结果表明，相互作用距离长的远距离流体动力相互作用，是RBC当量半径的约5倍以上，主要影响悬浮液的流变性，例如平均速度，短程相互作用对微毛细管流中细胞的形状敏感。细胞周围的流速在细胞变形中起关键作用。在流动和细胞的当前配置中，细胞沿着毛细管彼此排斥。