A Simulation Of Cell Deformation In A Flow Chamber Based On The Fluid-Solid Interaction Calculation Method

The blood cells living in the vessels are constantly subjected to all kinds of mechanical stimuli in vivo and in vitro. The blood cells' behavior will change as a response. In turn, the changes of the behavior of the blood cells will affect the properties of blood. Therefore, the research on the movement and deformation of the blood cells in the vessels has become an emphasis and difficulty in the field of biomechanics at home and abroad, and also has theoritical significance and applicable value in clinical medicine and prevention and treatment of disease.On the basis of previous work, this paper has conducted a numerical calculation of the deformation of a single cell in a flow chamber through programming based on the fluid-solid interaction theory. In order to solve this fluid-solid interacton problem, this calculation program used C codes as the main program which called FLUENT and ANSYS software, and UDF and APDL acted as a messenger to connect FLUENT and ANSYS for exchanging data to get the forces on the cell and the amount of deformation of the cell. The results of the average amount of deformation of the cell in three directions show that the amount of deformation of the cell in the gravity direction was the most notably, and the amount of deformation in the direction of flow was small. The cell changed into concave convex shape. The greater the elastic modulus of the cell was, the smaller of the amount of the maximum average deformation of the cell in the directions of gravity and flow would be. The change of elastic modulus of the cell had a significant effect on the deformation of the cell in the direction of flow, but had little effect on the deformation of the cell in the gravity direction. The smaller the deformation of the cell in the gravity direction was, the higher the cell would jump. The deformation of the cell had little effect on its movement in the direction of flow, but great effect in the gravity direction. The three-dimensional numerical simulation method adopted in this paper and the results of the calculation can provide a certain reference in the researches of the blood cells' behavior in the vessels.