Determination of Mechanical and Microstructural Tissue Quantities for Modeling Damage in Arterial Tissues

Abstract

The overstretching of arterial walls as it occurs, e.g., during balloon angioplasty, results in a stress-softening of the collagenous wall which is believed to arise from microscopic tissue damage. To model such damage we use a macroscopic, fiber-reinforced constitutive framework including a characterization of the individual tissue components. We employed traditional and novel experimental investigations to determine and quantify the required mechanical and microstructural tissue parameters for the constitutive model. Herein we present some of our experimental approaches and the resulting preliminary findings.