Electrohydrodynamics of Three-Dimensional Vesicles: A Numerical Approach

Abstract

A three-dimensional numerical model of vesicle electrohydrodynamics in the presence of DC electric fields is presented. The vesicle membrane is modeled as a thin capacitive interface through the use of a semi-implicit level set Jet scheme. The enclosed volume and surface area are conserved both locally and globally by a new Navier-Stokes projection method. The electric field calculations explicitly take into account the capacitive interface by an implicit Immersed Interface Method formulation, which calculates the electric potential field and the trans-membrane potential simultaneously. The results match well with previously published experimental, analytic and two-dimensional computational works.