%0 Conference Paper
%A Lettinga, M.P.
%A Gholivand, Amirreza
%A Dahlhoff, Knut
%A Dickscheid, Timo
%T Effect of true 3D vascular structures on the flow of aggregating red blood cells
%M FZJ-2025-04634
%D 2025
%X The significance of healthy blood vessels and blood flow for proper brain functioning is key in the development of human neurodegenerative disorders. Therefore, it is of interest to develop a platform to investigate blood flow through the brain vasculature.  Though the understanding of the flow dynamics greatly advanced with  the introduction of 2-D microfluidics, these channels are inherently different from the physiological vessels.  Here we introduce Selective Laser-induced Etching (SLE) as a novel technique  to produce full 3-D microfluidic geometries in glass with any desirable shape to study the flow dynamics of dispersions of aggregating  Red Blood Cells. We apply this technique to study the effect of distortion of the flow by a bifurcation as probed by a second generation of bifurcations, one of which being in-plane and one of which being out-of-plane with the first  bifurcation. We find that the distortion of the flow due to the first bifurcation relaxes in the branch with the out-of-plane bifurcation, whereas it does not relax in the branch with the in-plane bifurcation, as is the case in 2D microfluidic experiments. This difference in flow behaviour between both branches is only observed when the red blood cells are aggregated [1]. In addition, we excavated a trifurcation, as reconstructed from a human brain image. These experiments not only exemplify the possibilities of the technique, but they also show that asymmetry in the vessel geometry strongly impacts the flow behavior.
%B International Workshop on Advances in Mechanobiology
%C 27 Apr 2025 - 30 Apr 2025, Napoli (Italy)
Y2 27 Apr 2025 - 30 Apr 2025
M2 Napoli, Italy
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)6
%9 Conference Presentation
%U https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1048423