Biomedical Fluid Dynamics: Rich Flow Physics in Pulsatile Flow (Keynote)

Many biological flows, e.g. speech production and the vasculature, are pulsatile and consequently exhibit a rich array of flow physics not observed in steady flows. A classical example in biomedical flows is flow in a rigid walled pipe subjected to non-zero mean harmonic forcing. This flow, solved analytically by Womersley [1], has retrograde flow in the Stokes layer during portions of the cycle. This paper will highlight some of interesting flow phenomena that result from pulsatile flow.