An immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann approach to study the dynamics of elastic membranes in viscous shear flows

Abstract

A combined immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann approach is used to simulate the dynamics of elastic membrane immersed in a viscous incompressible flow. The lattice Boltzmann method is utilized to solve the flow field on a regular Eulerian grid, while the immersed boundary method is employed to incorporate the fluid–membrane interaction with a Lagrangian representation of the deformable immersed boundary. The distinct feature of the method used here is to employ the combination of simple Peskin's IBM and standard LBM. In order to obtain more accurate and truthful solutions, however, a non-uniform distribution of Lagrangian points and a modified Dirac delta function are used. Two test cases are presented. In the first case, we consider a vesicle suspended in a simple shear flow commonly known as tank-treading motion. The computed results were compared with experiments, which showed reasonably good agreement. For the second test case, we consider individual healthy (soft) and sick (stiff) RBCs suspended in a shear flow. The simulation results demonstrated that elastic deformation plays an important role in overall RBC motions characterized as tank-treading and tumbling motions, in which the natural state of the elastic membrane is an essential consideration. In addition, the results confirm that the combination of the immersed boundary and lattice Boltzmann methods permits the simulation of the complex biological phenomena.