ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how red blood cells play an important role in platelet adhesion to blood vessel walls and ultimately influence hemostasis and “blood clotting”. It focuses on blood arterioles with diameters ranging from 30 µm to 100 µm and the corresponding physiological wall shear rates between 1000s-1 and 3000s-1. Microfluidic channels with constrictions are often used as models for studying blood flow in the stenotic region. The margination process can be broken down to an initial formation of a near-wall peak close to the edge of the cell-free layer and a slow drainage of platelets from the cell-laden region. Platelet adhesion experiments using pure plasma will be different from whole blood at matching flow rates due to the change in flow profile. Due to the deformability of red blood cells, blood manifests rheological properties that differ from those of rigid particle suspensions.
