Abstract
This paper presents a methodology for the numerical fatigue-life assessment of cardiovascular balloon-expandable stents. The methodology is based on a global computational approach composed of a mechanical finite element analysis, followed by a fatigue analysis. The method is applied to a classical 316L stainless steel coronary stent design (i.e., the Medinol/Boston Scientific NIR™ stent). Fatigue criteria based on elastic and plastic shakedown concepts for finite and infinite lifetime are used to predict fatigue crack initiation and are calibrated on experimental data related to 316L stainless steel μm-size components, manufactured as stents. The results from the fatigue analysis allow to discuss several aspects affecting stent lifetime, such as the applied cyclic loading including systolic–diastolic pressurization and bending. The generality of the proposed methodology encourages further investigations of such an approach for its application to other materials or small-scale components.
Highlights
Nowadays, cardiovascular diseases represent a global health care problem, since are the leading cause of death and illness accounting for 30% of the deaths worldwide annually [1]
The work by Azaouzi et al [40] predicts the fatigue-life of 316L stainless steel stents through the well-known Goodman diagram and the theory of critical distance based on the results presented in [22,21]
This paper has proposed a numerical design method for the lifetime prediction of stents
Summary
Cardiovascular diseases represent a global health care problem, since are the leading cause of death and illness accounting for 30% of the deaths worldwide annually [1]. Many computational modeling works on stents directly apply bulk material properties to the structure [30,36,37,40,44,35,41] Among these works, dos Santos et al [36] predicted lifetimes lower than 4 Á 108 cycles for balloon-expandable stainless steel stents by incorporating a two-scale plasticity-damage model [45]. Dos Santos et al [36] predicted lifetimes lower than 4 Á 108 cycles for balloon-expandable stainless steel stents by incorporating a two-scale plasticity-damage model [45] Such an approach, requires the calibration of several parameters, which has been done by referring to experimental data on macroscopic specimens.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
