Abstract
A liposome is an artificial capsule which is composed of lipid bilayer structure. In the present study, The dynamics of the liposome in a simple shear flow is investigated. We present a liposome model which takes into account the fluidity of membrane. We adopt Immersed-Boundary method to couple the dynamics of the liposome with Stokes flow. Firstly, we calculate the deflated liposome as an equilibrium shape, and obtain a long stick-like liposome. Next we investigate the dynamics of the liposome in the simple shear flow. Our numerical scheme reproduces a tank-treading motion of the liposome in the steady state. By the comparison of our results with that of Beaucourt et al. in 2D and with that of Kraus et al. in 3D, we find that the difference in the treatment of the surface area constraint, whether local or total, does not affect the shape of the liposome in the tank-treading motion.
