Arterial Wall Mechanics in Conscious Dogs

Abstract To evaluate arterial physiopathology, complete arterial wall mechanical characterization is necessary. This study presents a model for determining the elastic response of elastin (ςE, where ς is stress), collagen (ςC), and smooth muscle (ςSM) fibers and viscous (ςη) and inertial (ςM) aortic wall behaviors. Our work assumes that the total stress developed by the wall to resist stretching is governed by the elastic modulus of elastin fibers (EE), the elastic modulus of collagen (EC) affected by the fraction of collagen fibers (fC) recruited to support wall stress, and the elastic modulus of the maximally contracted vascular smooth muscle (ESM) affected by an activation function (fA). We constructed the constitutive equation of the aortic wall on the basis of three different hookean materials and two nonlinear functions, fA and fC: \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \[{\varsigma}...