Electrohydrodynamics of Three-Dimensional Vesicles: A Numerical Approach

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, gradient-augmented 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 transmembrane potential simultaneously. The results match well with previously published experimental, analytic, and two-dimensional computational works.