Objective To study the blood flow distribution and the risk of thrombus generation in the inflow cannula of an axial blood pump. Methods The blood flow in the inflow cannula was simulated numerically by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method to obtain the velocity distribution. Then the blood velocity distribution in the central section of the inflow cannula was obtained by two dimensional particle image velocimetry (PIV) experiment. And the flow distribution in whole inflow cannula was tested with the three dimensional PIV system. The rotational speed of the blood pump was set to 8 000 r/min with the flow rate of 5 L/min. Then the possibility of thrombus generation in the axial blood pump inflow cannula was estimated by analyzing the flow property in the inflow cannula. Results There was no spiral flow, backflow, vortex flow or low-speed flow region in the whole inflow cannula. The flow velocity along the cannula wall increased rapidly from 0 m/s to above 0. 8 m/s outside the boundary layer. The blood velocity mainly distributed from 1. 2 m/s to1. 4 m/s. The turbulence level in the inflow cannula is 0. 17. Conclusions It is hard to form thrombus in the cannula caused by worse blood flow property because there was no backflow, vortex flow or stagnant flow region in the inflow cannula. The inflow cannula can steady the flow entry the blood pump to improve the flow characteristic in the axial blood pump.