Flow around cells adhered to a microvessel wall II: comparison to flow around adherent cells in channel flow.

The flow around adherent cells in a parallel-plate channel and that in a circular cylindrical tube are numerically analyzed, and their effects on the adherent cells are compared. The cells are modeled as rigid spherical particles and they are assumed to be attached to a wall of a 2D channel uniformly in a square array, or a wall of a circular tube regularly in a line along the tube axis. It is found that, when the size ratios of the particle-to-channel height and the particle-to-tube diameter are smaller than approximately 0.2, the distributions of the shear stress and the pressure exerted on the surface of an adherent particle as well as the drag force and torque acting on it compare favorably in the 2D channel flow and tube flow. As the size ratios increase from 0.2, the differences between the 2D channel and the tube increase drastically, especially when separation distances between neighboring particles are large.