Post-angioplasty remodeling of coronary arteries investigated via a chemo-mechano-biological in silico model.

This work presents the application of a chemo-mechano-biological constitutive model of soft tissues for describing tissue inflammatory response to damage in collagen constituents. The material model is implemented into a nonlinear finite element formulation to follow up a coronary standard balloon angioplasty for one year. Numerical results, compared with available in vivo clinical data, show that the model reproduces the temporal dynamics of vessel remodeling associated with subintimal damage. Such dynamics are bimodular, being characterized by an early tissue resorption and lumen enlargement, followed by late tissue growth and vessel constriction. Applicability of the modeling framework in retrospective studies is demonstrated, and future extension towards prospective applications is discussed.

Mechanical performance of Anatomic-Functional-Geometry dental treatments: A computational study.

In this paper the biomechanical response of a novel dental preparation technique, referred to as the Anatomic-Functional-Geometry treatment (AFG), is investigated through a 3D nonlinear finite-element modelling approach. A comparative investigation against a standard technique employed in dental clinical practice is carried out, by simulating typical experimental mechanical tests and physiological functional conditions. Failure mechanisms of treated tooth models are investigated through a progressive damage formulation implemented via a displacement-driven incremental approach. Computational results clearly show that AFG-treated teeth, as a consequence of a more conservative morphological preparation of the tooth, are characterized by more effective crown-dentin loading transfer mechanisms, higher fracture strength levels and more homogeneous stress patterns than the standard-treated ones, thereby opening towards widespread clinical application.