Oscillating motions of neutrally buoyant particle and red blood cell in Poiseuille flow in a narrow channel

Two motions of oscillation and vacillating breathing (swing) of red blood cell with a stiffened membrane have been observed in bounded Poiseuille flows [L. Shi, T.-W. Pan, and R. Glowinski, "Deformation of a single blood cell in bounded Poiseuille flows," Phys. Rev. E 85, 16307 (2012)]. To understand such motions, we have compared them with the oscillating motion of a neutrally buoyant particle of the same shape in Poiseuille flow in a narrow channel since a suspended cell is actually a neutrally buoyant entity. In a narrow channel, the particle can be held in the central region for a while with its mass center moving up and down if it is placed at the centerline initially. Its inclination angle oscillates at the beginning; but its range of oscillation keeps increasing and at the end the particle tumbles when the particle migrates away from the centerline due to the inertia effect. When the particle mass center is restricted to move only on the channel centerline, the inclination angle has been locked to a fixed angle without oscillation. Since the mass center of a deformable cell always migrates toward the channel central region in Poiseuille flow, its inclination angle behaves similar to the aforementioned oscillating motion of the particle as long as the cell keeps the long body shape and moves up and down. But when the up-and-down oscillation of the cell mass center damps out, the oscillating motion of the inclination angle also damps out and the cell inclination angle also approaches to a fixed angle. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.