Velocity measurements within confined turbulent jets: application to cardiovalvular regurgitation

An expression for centerline mean velocity distributions for circular and noncircular confined turbulent jets has been obtained by assuming self-preservation of flow downstream of the jet potential core. It was assumed that the velocity decay was not only dependent on the streamwise distance x in terms of x/d, as in the case of free jets, but also on the ratio of the orifice diameter d to the confining pipe diameter D. To validate the expression and to determine the empirical constants, measurements of the centerline velocities within the confined jets issuing from different size circular orifices and various noncircular orifices of different shapes were conducted. The results indicate that the validity of the expression is restricted to d/D < or =0.25 and is weakly dependent on the particular orifice shape. It is suggested that, as for the case of free turbulent jets reported earlier, that this expression may be used potentially to predict the valvular lesion size or to estimate the volume of valvular regurgitation for confined jets provided the value of D, which corresponds to the "atrial diameter," is known or statistically available.