Soft-glass model for the relaxation kinetics of red blood cells

Abstract

We use a soft-glass mechanical (SGM) model to reproduce the experimental force relaxation curves of red blood cells (RBC) measured by laser optical tweezers (LOT). The relaxation experiments consist in applying a deformation step jump and observe how the force, after reaching a maximum, decreases with time. The SGM model has been already successful to reproduce the LOT experimental pulling cycles of erythrocytes. We extend our model to reproduce the experimental relaxation curves if nicely predicts the stationary force of the relaxation in terms of the maximum force achieved immediately after the extension step-jump