Development of a Clamping Device for Tensile Testing of Intracranial Flow Diverter Stents

Abstract

Abstract The main danger of a brain aneurysm (a sack-like bulge on the vessel wall) is that in the event of a rupture a severe hemorrhage can occur which may cause death. However, if doctors have tools at their disposal, such as numerical models and simulations for analyzing patient-specific blood vessels, they could use them to decide if a particular treatment is necessary and if so, when. For such models, the different mechanical characteristics of the flow control devices are the input data. Several of these mechanical properties of the devices, such as modulus of elasticity and tensile strength, are determined by tensile testing. In the course of our research, we have developed a clamping device suitable for uniaxial tensile testing of flow diverter stents.