Figure 2.

Distribution of axial wall shear versus axial position of the contracting segment. Results are shown for instantaneous wall shear stress values at the minimum (60 μm), maximum (120μm) and average vessel radius (90 μm) for the periodic sinusoidal wall motion with a steady inlet case (the last case presented in Table 1a). Note that both time points the vessel is at its average size of 90 μm are plotted (i.e. as the vessel contracts “decreasing” and as the vessel dilates, “increasing”). The slight changes in wall shear stress along the axial length of the contracting segment are due to the monotonic changes in velocity, which thereby affect our wall shear stress calculation.