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Knowledge of human blood-flow waveforms is required for in vitro investigations and numerical modelling. Parameters of interest include: velocity and flow waveform shapes, inter-and intra-subject variability and frequency content. We characterized the blood-velocity waveforms in the left and right common carotid arteries (CCAs) of 17 normal volunteers (24 to 34 years), analysing 3560 cardiac cycles in total. Instantaneous peak-velocity (V peak) measurements were obtained using pulsed-Doppler ultrasound with simultaneous collection of ECG data. An archetypal V peak waveform was created using velocity and timing parameters at waveform feature points. We report the following timing (post-R-wave) and peak-velocity parameters: cardiac interbeat interval (T RR)= 0.917 s (intra-subject standard deviation=±0.045 s); cycle-averaged peak-velocity (V CYC)= 38.8 cm s-1 (±1.5 cm s-1); maximum systolic V peak …