On the importance of membrane viscoelasticity for the transport of red blood cells in shear flow

Red blood cells (RBCs) are able to deform and flow through the microcirculation thanks to the viscoelastic properties of their membrane. In this study, we present a FSI framework featuring a finite element RBC viscoelastic model coupled with a lattice-Boltzmann method to assess the impact of deformability, internal viscosity, and membrane viscosity on the RBC dynamics in bounded shear flow. We observed that (i) including a viscoelastic membrane influences more the migration timescale than the final equilibrium position along the channel centerline; (ii) the migration timescale is underestimated when the physiological viscosity contrast and the membrane viscosity are neglected.