Effects of stent structure on stent flexibility measurements

Adequate delivery and placement of intracoronary artery stents is dependent on various properties of the stent itself, including flexibility and high-radial strength. Although these properties can be assessed via determination of the bending stiffness and radial stiffness of a stent, the mesh structure of the stent does not lend easily to such measurements. The goal of the present study was to determine an optimal method for determining stent bending stiffness. The four-points bending test was used to evaluate stent flexibility, and the finite element method (FEM) was employed to assess the effect of stent structure on flexibility in stents with differing link structures. The four-points bending test yielded the following bending stiffness values: 85.28 N mm(2) for the stent with an S-shaped link; 41.67 N mm(2) for the stent with an N-shaped link; 78.79 N mm(2) for the stent with a modified W-shaped link; and 188.67 N mm(2) for the stent with a W-shaped link. The stent with the point symmetric link configuration (S-, N- and modified W-shaped link) had high flexibility. FEM analysis revealed that low flexibility resulted from interference between the struts at the compressive side. Further, the flexibility predicted from FEM analysis correlated with bending stiffness of the stents. We conclude that use of the four-points bending test yields information that is critical for the design of flexible stents.