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Controlled mean dynamics of red blood cells by two orthogonal ultrasonic standing waves

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2024

Yifan Liu
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory for Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China MOE Key Laboratory for Multifunctional Materials and Structures, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China
Fengxian Xin*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory for Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China MOE Key Laboratory for Multifunctional Materials and Structures, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China
*
† Email address for correspondence: fengxian.xin@gmail.com

Abstract

A computational model is developed to study the time-averaged mean dynamics of red blood cells (RBCs) driven by the time-averaged mean stress generated by two phase-shifted orthogonal ultrasonic standing waves in a viscous fluid. The cell is modelled as an ellipsoidal viscoelastic membrane enclosing the viscous fluid cytoplasm, the motion of which is described by the inclination angle of the ellipsoidal cell shape and the phase angle of the potential membrane cycle. Based on the acoustic perturbation method, the acoustic field and acoustic streaming field are solved to obtain the time-averaged mean stress, and then the temporal evolution equations of the inclination and phase angles of the cell are determined considering the torque balance and energy conservation. At a small acoustic pressure amplitude, this model reproduces the experimentally observed features of cell motion in orthogonal standing waves: the transition from steady stationary orientation to unsteady tumbling with the increase of the phase difference between the two standing waves. By turning up the acoustic pressure amplitude above a critical value, it is further predicted that the previously observed motions can be accompanied by the membrane tank-treading rotation. Observations of these motions, combined with the present computational model, can help to evaluate the mechanical properties of RBC membranes in an automated and high-throughput manner by acoustic methods.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Time-averaged mean dynamics of RBCs driven by two orthogonal ultrasonic standing waves. (a) Experimental set-up for generating two-dimensional standing waves. The background contour shows the acoustic pressure in (2.1) with phase difference $\varphi = 0$, and the colour ranges from $- {p_{am}}$ (blue) to ${p_{am}}$ (red). (b) Coordinate systems and variables describing cell motion. Here, $(\hat{x},\hat{y},\hat{z})$ is the fixed coordinate frame, $(x,y,z)$ is the body coordinate frame, $\theta $ is the inclination angle describing cell rigid tumbling and $\phi $ is the phase angle describing membrane tank treading.

Figure 1

Figure 2. (a) Schematic of the material configuration ${\mathrm{{\mathcal{B}}}_0}$ before acoustic excitation, the mean configuration $\mathrm{{\mathcal{B}}}$ of particle mean motion and the deformed configuration ${\mathrm{{\mathcal{B}}}_t}$ of particle actual motion. (b) Schematic of mean and actual trajectories with initial position $\boldsymbol{X}$. The difference between the mean position $\boldsymbol{x}$ and the actual position $\boldsymbol{y}$ of the particle is measured by the acoustic oscillation displacement $\boldsymbol{\xi }$.

Figure 2

Figure 3. (a–d) Time-averaged second-order velocity field and corresponding streamlines in the $\hat{y}\hat{z}$ plane of the body frame. (e–f) Plots of the membrane traction: the arrow plots show the direction and relative magnitude of membrane traction; the line plots show the normal component ${f_n} = \boldsymbol{f}\boldsymbol{\cdot }\boldsymbol{n}$ and tangential component ${f_t} = \boldsymbol{f}\boldsymbol{\cdot }\boldsymbol{t}$ along the arclength s with $\boldsymbol{n}$ being the unit normal vector pointing outward the cell, and $\boldsymbol{t}$ being the unit tangential vector pointing clockwise. The first to fourth rows correspond to the four acoustic streaming components ${\boldsymbol{v}_{TT}}$, ${\boldsymbol{v}_{AA}}$, $\boldsymbol{v}_{AT}^0$ and $\boldsymbol{v}_{AT}^{{\rm \pi} /2}$, respectively. The red ellipse represents the RBC membrane.

Figure 3

Table 1. Values of torques and works.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Contours of the root-mean-square acoustic pressure in the $\hat{y}\hat{z}$ plane of the fixed frame for incident waves with different phase differences: (a) $\xi = 0$ and (b) $\xi = {\rm \pi}/2$. The acoustic pressure amplitude is ${p_{am}} = 1\ \textrm{MPa}$. The red ellipse represents the RBC membrane.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Acoustic streaming velocity and corresponding streamlines around the RBC in 2-D standing waves in the $\hat{y}\hat{z}$ plane of the fixed frame for different phase differences: (a–d) $\xi = 0$ and (e–h) $\xi = {\rm \pi}/2$. The first to fourth rows correspond to the four inclination angles $\theta = 0$, $- {\rm \pi}/4$, $- {\rm \pi}/2$ and ${\rm \pi} /4$, respectively. The acoustic pressure amplitude is ${p_{am}} = 1\ \textrm{MPa}$. The red ellipse represents the RBC membrane.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Schematic of the motion transition of an RBC, with the blue and green particles representing two material points attached to the cell membrane. The upper branch shows that the cell tumbles when the phase difference exceeds the critical phase difference, while the lower branch shows that the cell tank treads when the acoustic pressure amplitude exceeds the critical acoustic pressure amplitude.

Figure 7

Figure 7. (a) Phase diagram of RBC motion in 2-D ultrasonic standing waves as a function of the dimensionless acoustic force ${\tilde{P}^{ac}} = p_{am}^2\kappa _0^eR/(e{\mu ^m})$ and phase difference $\zeta $, showing four different regimes. The solid lines are the numerical solutions of (2.35) and (2.43), while the circles are the analytical solutions of (3.5) and (3.6). (b) Phase diagram of RBC motion in general linear flow as a function of the capillary number $Ca = G{\eta ^e}R/(e{\mu ^m})$ and parameter $\varsigma $ measuring the ratio of the strain rate to vorticity, also showing four different regimes. The mechanical properties of the cell membrane are: effective shear modulus ${\mu ^m} = 0.5\ \textrm{Pa}$ and surface viscosity ${\eta ^m} = 0\ \textrm{Pa}\ \textrm{s}$. (a) 2-D standing waves and (b) general linear flow.

Figure 8

Figure 8. Typical temporal evolution of inclination angle $\theta $ and phase angle $\phi $ in the four different regions in figure 7(a): (a) ${p_{am}} = 0.3\ \textrm{MPa}$ and $\zeta = 0.4{\rm \pi} $; (b) ${p_{am}} = 0.7\ \textrm{MPa}$ and $\zeta = 0.4{\rm \pi} $; (c) ${p_{am}} = 0.3\ \textrm{MPa}$ and $\zeta = 0.2{\rm \pi} $; and (d) ${p_{am}} = 0.9\ \textrm{MPa}$ and $\zeta = 0.29{\rm \pi} $. (a) Tumbling, (b) intermittent rotation, (c) steady stationary state and (d) tank treading.

Figure 9

Figure 9. (a) Tank-treading frequency ${f^{tt}}$ and (b) average inclination ${\theta ^m}$ versus membrane viscosity for different cytoplasmic viscosity at the acoustic pressure amplitude ${p_{am}} = 0.8\ \textrm{MPa}$ and the phase difference $\zeta = 0.2{\rm \pi} $.

Figure 10

Figure 10. (a) Cartesian coordinate system $(x,y,z)$ and cylindrical coordinate system $(r,\varphi ,z)$ used in the calculation. (b) Sketch of the two-dimensional axisymmetric geometry used in the simulation, consisting of a cell (shown in red) and a part of the surrounding medium (shown in grey). Note that the entire computational domain and the cell are not scaled.

Figure 11

Table 2. Boundary conditions for calculating acoustic streaming.

Figure 12

Figure 11. Comparison of the present results and previous results: normalized torque ${M^{ac}}/p_{am}^2$ on rigid spherical particles with different normalized radii $R/\delta $.

Figure 13

Figure 12. Comparison of the present results with those calculated by previous methods: normalized acoustic-induced torque ${M^{ac}}/p_{am}^2$ on rigid ellipsoidal particles with ellipsoidal radii ${a_x} = {a_y} = 10\ {\rm \mu}\mathrm{m}$ and ${a_z}$ between $10\ {\rm \mu}\mathrm{m}$ and $40\ {\rm \mu}\mathrm{m}$.