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On the rheology of red blood cell suspensions with different amounts of dextran: separating the effect of aggregation and increase in viscosity of the suspending phase

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Abstract

We investigate the shear thinning of red blood cell-dextran suspensions. Microscopic images show that at low polymer concentration, aggregation increases with increasing concentration until it reaches a maximum and then decreases again to non-aggregation. This bell-shape dependency is also deduced from the rheological measurements, if the data are correctly normalized by the viscosity of the suspending phase since a significant amount of polymers adsorb to the cell surfaces. We find that the position of the maximum of this shear rate-dependent bell shape increases with increasing viscosity of the suspending phase, which indicates that the dynamic process of aggregation and disaggregation is coupled via hydrodynamic interactions. This hydrodynamic coupling can be suppressed by characterizing a suspension of 80 % hematocrit which yields good agreement with the results from the microscopical images.

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Acknowledgments

The research leading to this result has received fundings from the German Research Foundation (DFG, SFB 1027), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and the German French university (DFH/UFA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Experimental Physics, Saarland University, 66123, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Daniel Flormann & Christian Wagner

  2. Winterberg Hospital, Saarland, 66119, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Katharina Schirra

  3. Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique, CNRS-UMR 5588, Université Grenoble, B.P. 87, 38402, Saint Martin d’Hères Cedex, France

    Thomas Podgorski

Authors
  1. Daniel Flormann
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  2. Katharina Schirra
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  3. Thomas Podgorski
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  4. Christian Wagner
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Wagner.

Additional information

This paper belongs to the special issue on the “Rheology of blood cells, capsules and vesicles”.

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Flormann, D., Schirra, K., Podgorski, T. et al. On the rheology of red blood cell suspensions with different amounts of dextran: separating the effect of aggregation and increase in viscosity of the suspending phase. Rheol Acta 55, 477–483 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00397-015-0882-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00397-015-0882-7

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