A Hybrid Particle-Continuum Approach For Fluid Flow Transport Of Eukaryotic Cells*

Eukaryotic cells play a vital role in physiological processes inside the human body. Past works have been done to simulate cell dynamics under interstitial fluid transport using particle microscopic methods such as the Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) method. However, the computational cost limits the practical use of DPD in anatomical geometries. In this work, we propose a novel Fluid-Structure Interaction formulation that combines continuum and particle approaches to simulate the dynamics of eukaryotic cells in fluid flows. Here, The DPD method is used to model the cytoplasm fluid, the nucleus, and the cellular membrane. The particle interactions follow the DPD method's additive pairwise internal, conservative, dissipative, and random forces. The extracellular flow is modelled with the Immersed Boundary Method, which allows the simulation of complex vascular structures. This new formulation can resolve the local dynamics of fluid flows in the vicinity of the cells while providing large-scale flow patterns in the vascular vessel at the same time. We will report the performance of this approach for the transport of (1) a Red Blood Cell; and (2) an epithelial cell in fluid flows.