Embedded in the DFG Research Unit FOR 2688 with the goal to better understand the hydrodynamics of blood flow, in our project we focus on the particle-fluid interactions.

In a pipe flow experiment with a length up to 20m meter we drive the flow periodically with waveforms, e.g. of the human heart. By performing state of the art Lagrangian particle tracking (with the Shake-The-Box algorithm) we observe that particles trigger flow instabilities especially in the decelerating pulsation phase and that particle rotation is one of the dominant mechanisms for particle migration in these flows.