Layer-specific residual deformations and uniaxial and biaxial mechanical properties of thoracic porcine aorta

In this paper we hypothesize that the layer-separated residual stresses and mechanical properties of layer-separated thoracic aorta arteries may be dependent on arterial location of the vessel. To demonstrate any possible position differences, we measured the axial pre-stretch and opening angle and performed uniaxial and biaxial tests under physiological loads to study the mechanical behavior of both intact and layer-separated porcine aortic samples taken from thoracic region. In addition, we also provided constitutive parameters for each layer that can be used by biomedical engineers for investigating better therapies and developing artery-specific devices. We found that the opening angle for whole artery and adventitia layer are smaller and intima greater for proximal segments than for the distal thoracic ones. For the axial pre-stretch, our results showed significant increased values of the stretch ratios with location. We found that lower thoracic samples are stiffer than upper ones with the most important differences corresponding to those between the proximal and distal behaviors in the circumferential direction. The anisotropy represented by the different circumferential and longitudinal response is more remarkable in lower thoracic aorta. Finally, adventitia and intima samples present a tendency to be stiffer and more isotropic than the corresponding media samples in both directions for upper thoracic aorta and to be more anisotropic for lower thoracic aorta. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.