Conference Agenda

In this work a numerical method for fully three dimensional simulations of a capsule in the electrohydrodynamic regime is proposed. A quasi-steady dual time-stepping scheme allows for iterative computation of the capsule’s fluid velocity using the multigrid lattice Boltzmann method at each time step. The capsule’s elasticity is computed using a linear finite element method and the membrane’s bending resistance is computed from the Helfrich bending energy. The immersed interface method (IIM) is used to compute the electric field arising due to the electrical properties of the interior fluid, exterior fluid, and the membrane. The fluid structure interaction is facilitated through the immersed boundary method (IBM), which is coupled to the IIM through least squares interpolation between the control points of the IIM and the Lagrangian nodes of the IBM. The method is validated by comparing the numerical results to analytical solutions and previously published studies. The method is then used to study the deformation of a capsule in a combined shear flow and DC electric field for various membrane conductances, membrane capacitances, and conductivity ratios. For nonconducting membranes the interaction between the distribution of the electric forces and the capsule inclination angle due to the shear flow result in complex equilibrium dynamics not reported for neutral capsules.