  The Immersed Boundary (IB) method is a widely-used numerical methodology for
the simulation of fluid-structure interaction problems. The IB method utilizes
an Eulerian discretization for the fluid equations of motion while maintaining
a Lagrangian representation of structural objects. Operators are defined for
transmitting information (forces and velocities) between these two
representations. Most IB simulations represent their structures with
piecewise-linear approximations and utilize Hookean spring models to
approximate structural forces. Our specific motivation is the modeling of
platelets in hemodynamic flows. In this paper, we study two alternative
representations - radial basis functions (RBFs) and Fourier-based
(trigonometric polynomials and spherical harmonics) representations - for the
modeling of platelets in two and three dimensions within the IB framework, and
compare our results with the traditional piecewise-linear approximation
methodology. For different representative shapes, we examine the geometric
modeling errors (position and normal vectors), force computation errors, and
computational cost and provide an engineering trade-off strategy for when and
why one might select to employ these different representations.
