Evaluation of blood plasma flow around 2D erythrocytes with the use of computational fluid dynamics / Avaliação do escoamento de plasma sanguíneo ao redor de eritrócitos 2D com o uso de fluidodinâmica computacional

 Hemodynamic forces, such as Wall Shear Stress, are known to be one of the factors behind atherosclerotic plaque formation in blood vessels. Such plaque formation may lead to clinical conditions such as aneurysms and stenosis. Given the importance of understanding the hemodynamics inside blood vessels, CFD-based (Computational Fluid Dynamics) tools can be applied with Medical imaging techniques, in order to assist physicians. Although CFD simulations try to simulate cases as close as possible to their real physics, simplifications are often required. Furthermore, blood is usually taken as being a single-phase fluid, despite it being a suspension of blood cells in plasma. This is due to the focus of computational hemodynamics often being the whole blood flow or pathologies within the blood vessel. However, blood cells can account to more than half of the blood volume, depending on the patient. Hence, the present work aimed to study the behavior of plasma, flowing around a single erythrocyte, as well as a cluster of erythrocytes immersed in a 2D domain. In the simulations, parameters such as the Reynolds number and velocity profiles were analyzed. Results showed that erythrocyte geometry had an influence in the velocity profiles. Moreover, Reynolds numbers were considerably low, due to the micro scale utilized in the simulations, which was in accordance with literature.