Edwina Yeo

Clumping and clotting: Multiscale modelling of responsive species in fluid flows

A wide range of biological and therapeutic species change their behaviour, geometry or propensity to adhere in response to external stimuli. For instance, bacteria modify their swimming behaviour close to fluid boundaries and proteins unfold differently depending on local flow structure. Predicting the behaviour of these species in macroscale fluid flows is vital to mitigate and understand effects such as aggregation or surface adhesion.

In this talk, I will present two examples of incorporating discrete microscale behaviour into continuum models via mean-field modelling. Firstly, I include microscale protein unfolding to predict blood clot initiation and secondly, I include microscale magnetic interactions to predict the macroscale aggregation and transport of magnetic nanoparticles. I will discuss the benefits of upscaling for model parameterisation and prediction as well as the limitations of the resulting macroscale models.