In vivo evidence of blood flow slippage: failure of the no-slip boundary condition assumption

Abstract

The assumption that blood adheres to vessel walls, the ``no-slip'' boundary condition, is an essential premise of cardiovascular fluid dynamics. Yet, whether it holds true \emph{in vivo} has not been established. Using 4D flow magnetic resonance imaging of the human thoracic aorta and modeling blood as a Navier--Stokes fluid, we quantify the velocity of blood at the wall. We find tangential wall velocities of about 30--80\% of the mean luminal velocity, providing clear evidence of blood slippage. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that the no-slip condition does not apply to blood flow \emph{in vivo}. This finding challenges a fundamental assumption in cardiovascular modeling and directly affects key blood flow characteristics such as pressure drop, vorticity, wall shear stress, and energy dissipation, all of which play important roles across a wide range of cardiovascular conditions.