Blood and Turbulence: How varying Reynolds Numbers Affects Shear-Induced Haemolysis in Turbulent Taylor-Couette Flows

Abstract

The primary concern of this thesis is to explore the extent to which turbulent shear stresses affect the rupturing of red blood cells. In the first part of this section, the necessary information to understand turbulence and shear stresses in the context of blood damage is outlined. This is followed by an overview of the properties of blood relevant to haemolysis. Once these fundamentals have been established, an introduction to the interaction between blood damage and turbulence and a brief summary of the literature in this area are provided. Lastly, as the turbulent flow conditions used to gather the experimental data for this work are created using a Taylor-Couette device, the final part of this chapter introduces the theoretical concepts of Taylor-Couette flows that are needed to understand this research.