The strength of adhesion and dynamics of detachment of murine 3T3 fibroblasts from self-assembled monolayers were measured in a radial-flow chamber (RFC) by applying models for fluid mechanics, adhesion strength probability distributions, and detachment kinetics. Four models for predicting fluid mechanics in a RFC were compared to evaluate the accuracy of each model and the significance of inlet effects. Analysis of these models indicated an outer region at large radial positions consistent with creeping flow, an intermediate region influenced by inertial dampening, and an inner region dominated by entrance effects from the axially-oriented inlet. In accompanying experiments patterns of the fraction of cells resisting detachment were constructed for individual surfaces as a function of the applied shear stress and evaluated by comparison with integrals of both a normal and a log-normal distribution function. The two functions were equally appropriate, yielding similar estimates of the mean strength of adhesion. Further, varying the Reynolds number in the inlet, Re-d, between 630 and 1480 (corresponding to volumetric flow rates between 0.9 and 2.1 mL/s) did not affect the mean strength of adhesion. For these same experiments, analysis of the dynamics of detachment revealed three temporal phases : 1) rapid detachment of cells at the onset of flow, consistent with a first-order homogeneous kinetic model; 2) time-dependent rate of detachment during the first 30 sec. of exposure to hydrodynamic shear, consistent with the first-order heterogeneous kinetic model proposed by Dickinson and Cooper (1995); and 3) negligible detachment, indicative of pseudo-steady state after 60 sec. of flow. Our results provide rigorous guidelines for the measurement of adhesive interactions between mammalian cells and prospective biomaterial surfaces using a RFC.