Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

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Description

Platelets play an essential role in blood clotting; they adhere to damaged tissue and release chemicals that activate other platelets. Yet in order to adhere, they must first come into contact with the injured vessel wall. Under arterial flow conditions, platelets have an enhanced concentration near blood vessel walls due to their interaction with red blood cells. We use a parallel lattice Boltzmann-Immersed Boundary method to solve the flow dynamics of platelets in whole blood and use this model to analyze the influence of shear rate and hematocrit on lateral platelet motion. Our model shows that the effective diffusion of platelets is significantly lower near the vessel walls compared to the center of the vessel and suggest that this non-uniform diffusion plus an additional radial drift result in a platelet near-wall excess.