An Experiment on the Pulsatile Flow at Transitional Reynolds Numbers—The Fluid Dynamical Meaning of the Blood Flow Parameters in the Aorta

Abstract

An experiment on the fully developed sinusoidal pulsatile flow at transitional Reynolds numbers was performed to evaluate the basic characteristics of the wall shear stress. In this experiment, the wall shear stress was calculated from the measured section averaged axial velocity and the pressure gradient by using the section averaged Navier-Stokes equation. The experimental results showed that the ratio of the amplitude of the wall shear stress to the amplitude of the pressure gradient had the maximum value when the time averaged Reynolds number was about 4000 and the Womersley number was about 10. As this condition is close to the blood flow condition in the human aorta, it is suggested that the parameter of the aorta has an effect to increase the amplitude of the wall shear stress acting on the arterial wall.