Accurate evaluation of turbulent velocity statistics in pulsatile flows is important in estimating potential damage to blood constituents from prosthetic heart valves. Variations in the mean flow from one cycle to the next can result in artificially high estimates. Here we demonstrate a procedure using a digital, low-pass filter to remove the cycle-to-cycle variation from turbulence statistics. The results show that cycle-to-cycle variations can significantly affect estimates of turbulent Reynolds stress and should be either eliminated or demonstrated to be small when reporting pulsatile flow results.

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