title: Modeling of long-term fatigue damage of soft tissue with stress softening and permanent set effects.
abstract: One of the major failure modes of bioprosthetic heart valves is non-calcific structural deterioration due to fatigue of the tissue leaflets. Experimental methods to characterize tissue fatigue properties are complex and time-consuming. A constitutive fatigue model that could be calibrated by isolated material tests would be ideal for investigating the effects of more complex loading conditions. However, there is a lack of tissue fatigue damage models in the literature. To address these limitations, in this study, a phenomenological constitutive model was developed to describe the stress softening and permanent set effects of tissue subjected to long-term cyclic loading. The model was used to capture characteristic uniaxial fatigue data for glutaraldehyde-treated bovine pericardium and was then implemented into finite element software. The simulated fatigue response agreed well with the experimental data and thus demonstrates feasibility of this approach.
authors.affiliation: Tissue Mechanics Laboratory, Biomedical Engineering Program and Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Connecticut, 207 Bronwell Building, Storrs, CT 06269-3139, USA.
authors.forename: Caitlin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Sun
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005976:Glutaral / Q000494:pharmacology; D006350:Heart Valve Prosthesis; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D010496:Pericardium / Q000187:drug effects / Q000473:pathology*; D013314:Stress, Mechanical; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D005976:Glutaral