Evaluation on the structure and mechanical property of crimped woven vascular graft with continuous variable cross-sections

Abstract

To improve the clinical performance of textile vascular graft, a crimping treatment was applied on the prepared woven vascular graft prototypes with continuous variable cross-sections (CVCW vascular graft), then the structure and mechanical properties of crimped CVCW vascular graft woven samples with different fabric weaves and conical angles were evaluated. The results indicated that the corrugation wall structure of the crimped CVCW vascular graft was still uniform after the crimping treatment, while both their average pore size and the water permeability decreased. On the other hand, the stress-strain behavior of the crimped woven CVCW vascular grafts obeyed the BoxLucas equation. Further, all of the radial compression strength (>15cN), the bursting strength (>15Mpa) and the radial compliance (0.85%) of the crimped CVCW vascular grafts were greatly improved, but the elastic recovery was reduced in comparison with the round straight tubular graft. Generally, this work demonstrated the good performance of the crimped CVCW vascular grafts for future clinical practice, as well as the feasibility of the crimping treatment techniques in improving the biomimetic design of woven CVCW vascular graft.