Biomechanical behavior of the arterial wall and its numerical characterization

This paper presents the biomechanical behavior of two types of rat arteries under the passive state of the vascular smooth muscles. The hyperelastic, highly nonlinear, incompressible and orthotropic stress-strain behavior of arteries is described by adopting a classical material model of the exponential type and a 'biphasic' one, recently proposed by the authors. In order to obtain the fundamental relations for a computer simulation the theoretical continuum-mechanical background is briefly reviewed in a compact manner as well. By using the new material model the study shows a significant improvement in approaching the experimental stress-strain data within the entire pressure domain (from 0 up to 200 mm Hg) and for various levels of prestretch encompassing physiological pressures and the individual in vivo axial prestretches. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.