title: Biomechanical behavior of the arterial wall and its numerical characterization.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Baustatik-Computational Biomechanics, Technische Universität Graz, Austria. gerhard.holzapfel@biomech.tugraz.ac.at
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Holzapfel
authors.forename: H W
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Weizsäcker
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001012:Aorta, Abdominal / Q000502:physiology*; D001158:Arteries / Q000502:physiology*; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D020342:Finite Element Analysis; D018056:Hemorheology; D008297:Male; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000098:blood supply*; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D009716:Numerical Analysis, Computer-Assisted; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D013314:Stress, Mechanical