A hybrid method to study flow-induced deformation of three-dimensional capsules (Q939497)

The authors study the flow-induced deformation of a liquid-filled capsule enclosed by a thin elastic membrane, having various applications in mathematical biology and chemical engineering. The suggested in [\textit{Y. Sui, Y.-T. Chew, P. Roy} and \textit{H.-T. Low}, Int. J. Numer. Methods Fluids, 53, No.~11, 1727--1754 (2007; Zbl 1110.76042)] multi-block strategy in the immersed boundary lattice Boltzmann method (IB-LBM) is extended to three-dimensional simulations. The capsule membrane is discretized into unstructured flat triangular elements. To obtain the forced acting on the membrane nodes, a finite element model is incorporated into the multi-block IB-LBM. Only the computational domain near the capsule is covered by fine mesh, so that the computational accuracy and efficiency are increased. The presented method is validated by studying the transient deformations of initially spherical and oblate spherical capsules with various membrane constitutive laws in a shear flow. The versality of this method is demonstrated by studying the effects of inertia on the deformation of capsules, and the deformation of capsules with complex shape like the biconcave discoid.