Rheology of blood. I. Energy absorption by membrane of RBC during flow?

A qualitative analysis shows that it is better to consider blood as a heterogeneous medium so that the behaviour of red blood cell (RBC) and behaviour of plasma could be combined to arrive at the rheological behaviour of blood. The existence of an elastic membrane, over a deformable RBC, indicates that when present along with the incompressible plasma during flow, the membrane would absorb energy to undergo modification to be able to transmit the force used for the flow process. This absorption results in an unavailable part of the supplied energy.