Pulsatile flows occur in a variety of engineering applications as well as in the human body. While many studies have addressed the dynamics of steady flow through channels or pipes with spatially varying diameters, surprisingly few investigations have considered time-depend- ent flows with uniform diameter. Hence, the purpose of the present work is to systematically establish both linear and fully nonlinear flow features prevailing in pulsatile channel flows.
In this work we have analysed the behaviour of small-amplitude pertur- bations and the fully developed nonlinear dynamics resulting from un- stable configurations. By investigating large regions of a multi-dimen- sional control-parameter space and considering both 2D and 3Dfluctua- tions, essentially two types of fully developed dynamics have been iden- tified: a ``cruising'' regime where nonlinearities are sustained throughout the entire pulsation cycle, and a ``ballistic'' regime consisting of linear and nonlinear phases that alternate, locked-in with the base flow pulsa- tion.