Collateral flow at circle of Willis in healthy condition.

Experimental simulation of cerebrovascular system would be very beneficial tool to evaluate millions of human body cascade sequence. The Circle of Willis (CoW) recently named Cerebral Arterial Circle (CAC) is a main loop structure of cerebral circulatory system which positioned at the cranium base. In this research, we investigate cerebral artery flow pattern in cerebral arteries including afferent, Willisian, and efferent arteries of CAC emphasizing on communicating and connecting arteries which are main routes in CAC and as a risky sites when autoregulation is occurred in terminal parts of middle cerebral arteries (MCAs) by PMMA (Polymethyl methacrylate) chip and high quality camera which depict Sequential images. This novelty study analyze flow pattern in CAC that have been challenging subject area for many years which have investigated by scientists yet, because flow pattern in CAC indicate complication progression. This research tries to construct new platform in cerebral circulation analyzing method by reliable experimental in-vitro approach. The outcomes of this study demonstrate that communicating arteries especially anterior communicating artery (ACoA) is main artery in CAC flow distribution.

Heat and mass transfer in the hyperthermia cancer treatment by magnetic nanoparticles.

In this study, a more precise and cost-effective method is used for studying the drug delivery and distribution of magnetic nanoparticles in fluid hyperthermia cancer treatment, and numerical methods are employed to determine the effect of blood circulation on heat transfer and estimate the success of cancer treatment. A combination of numerical, analytical, and experimental researches is being conducted, which illustrates the essential role of numerical methods in medical and biomedical science. Magnetic NanoParticles' distribution and effects of infusion rate on the treatment are also discussed by considering the real distribution of MNPs. To increase accuracy and reduce costs in the in-vitro section, direct cutting and image processing methods are used instead of MRI. Based on the results of this section, with a tenfold increase in the infusion rate (4 µl/min to 40 µl/min), the penetration depth increases by 1 mm, which represents a nearly 17 percent increase. Concentrations of MNPs also decrease significantly at higher infusion rates. The simulations of heat transfer reveal that maximum temperatures occur at the lowest infusion rate (1.25 µl/min), and blood flow also has a significant effect on heat transfer. With an increase in the infusion rate, necrosis tissue recedes from the tumor center and approaches the border between the tumor and healthy tissue. Results also show that, in lower MNPs' concentrations, higher infusion rates result in better treatment even though minimum infusion rates are suggested to be the best rates to facilitate distribution and treatment.

Simultaneous Modeling of Young's Modulus, Yield Stress, and Rupture Strain of Gelatin/Cellulose Acetate Microfibrous/Nanofibrous Scaffolds Using RSM.

Electrospinning is a promising method to fabricate bioengineered scaffolds, thanks to utilizing various types of biopolymers, flexible structures, and also the diversity of output properties. Mechanical properties are one of the major components of scaffold design to fabricate an efficacious artificial substitute for the natural extracellular matrix. Additionally, fiber orientations, as one of the scaffold structural parameters, could play a crucial role in the application of fabricated fibrous scaffolds. In this study, gelatin was used as a highly biocompatible polymer in blend with cellulose acetate (CA), a polysaccharide, to enhance the achievable range of mechanical characteristics to fabricated fibrous electrospun scaffolds. By altering input variables, such as polymers concentration, weight ratio, and mandrel rotation speed, scaffolds with various mechanical and morphological properties could be achieved. As expected, the electrospun scaffold with a higher mandrel rotation speed shows higher fiber alignment. A wide range of mechanical properties were gained through different values of polymer ratio and total concentration. A general improvement in mechanical strength was observed by increasing the concentration and CA content in the solution, but contradictory effects, such as high viscosity in more concentrated solutions, influenced the mechanical characteristics as well. A response surface method was applied on experimental results in order to describe a continuous variation of Young's modulus, yield stress, and strain at rupture. A full quadratic version of equations with the 95% confidence level was applied for the response modeling. This model would be an aid for engineers to adjust mandrel rotation speed, solution concentration, and gelatin/CA ratio to achieve desired mechanical and structural properties.

Centrifugal isolation of SARS-CoV-2: numerical simulation for purification of hospitals' air.

Coronavirus and its spread all over the world have been the most challenging crisis in 2020. Hospitals are categorized among the most vulnerable centers due to their presumably highest traffic of this virus. In this study, centrifugal isolation of coronavirus is successfully deployed for purifying hospitals' air using air conditioners and ducts, suggesting an efficient setup. Numerical simulations have been used to testify the proposed setup due to the complexities of using experimental investigation such as high cost and clinical hazards of the airborne SARS-CoV-2 in the air. Results show that a 20-cm pipe with an inlet velocity of 4 m/s constitutes the best choice for the separation and purification of air from the virus. The proposed scalable method also efficiently separates larger particles, but it can separate smaller particles too. Numerical results also suggest installing the air purifying system on the floor of the hospitals' room for maximum efficiency.

Inertial cell sorting of microparticle-laden flows: An innovative OpenFOAM-based arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian numerical approach.

The need for cell and particle sorting in human health care and biotechnology applications is undeniable. Inertial microfluidics has proven to be an effective cell and particle sorting technology in many of these applications. Still, only a limited understanding of the underlying physics of particle migration is currently available due to the complex inertial and impact forces arising from particle-particle and particle-wall interactions. Thus, even though it would likely enable significant advances in the field, very few studies have tried to simulate particle-laden flows in inertial microfluidic devices. To address this, this study proposes new codes (solved in OpenFOAM software) that capture all the salient inertial forces, including the four-way coupling between the conveying fluid and the suspended particles traveling a spiral microchannel. Additionally, these simulations are relatively (computationally) inexpensive since the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation allows the fluid elements to be much larger than the particles. In this study, simulations were conducted for two different spiral microchannel cross sections (e.g., rectangular and trapezoidal) for comparison against previously published experimental results. The results indicate good agreement with experiments in terms of (monodisperse) particle focusing positions, and the codes can readily be extended to simulate two different particle types. This new numerical approach is significant because it opens the door to rapid geometric and flow rate optimization in order to improve the efficiency and purity of cell and particle sorting in biotechnology applications.

Frequency dependent multiphase flows on centrifugal microfluidics.

The simultaneous flow of gas and liquids in large scale conduits is an established approach to enhance the performance of different working systems under critical conditions. On the microscale, the use of gas-liquid flows is challenging due to the dominance of surface tension forces. Here, we present a technique to generate common gas-liquid flows on a centrifugal microfluidic platform. It consists of a spiral microchannel and specific micro features that allow for temporal and local control of stratified and slug flow regimes. We investigate several critical parameters that induce different gas-liquid flows and cause the transition between stratified and slug flows. We have analytically derived formulations that are compared with our experimental results to deliver a general guideline for designing specific gas-liquid flows. As an application of the gas-liquid flows in enhancing microfluidic systems' performance, we show the acceleration of the cell growth of E. coli bacteria in comparison to traditional culturing methods.

Three-dimensional modeling of Marfan syndrome with elastic and hyperelastic materials assumptions using fluid-structure interaction.

BACKGROUND: Marfan syndrome (MFS) is a genetic disorder of the connective tissue. It most prominently influences the skeletal, cardiovascular, and ocular systems, but all fibrous connective tissue throughout the body can be affected as well. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate a realistic three-dimensional model of an aorta of a specific patient suffering from MFS by considering elastic and hyperelastic materials for the tissue using fluid-structure interaction (FSI). METHODS: Isotropic linear elastic and Mooney-Rivlin hyperelastic assumptions are implemented. Linear and nonlinear mechanical properties of the aneurysmal MFS aortic tissue are derived from an uniaxial experimental test. RESULTS: Vortex generation in the vicinity of the aneurysm region in both elastic and hyperelastic models and the maximum blood velocity at peak flow time is calculated as 0.517 and 0.533 m/s for the two materials, respectively. The blood pressure is not significantly different between the two models (±8 Pa) and the blood pressure difference between the points in the horizontal plane of the aneurysm region is obtained as ±10 Pa for both models. The maximum von Mises stress for the hyperelastic model (2.19 MPa) is 27% more than the elastic one (1.72 MPa) and takes place at the inner curvature and upper part of the aorta and somehow far from the aneurysm region. The wall shear stress (WSS) is also considered for the elastic and hyperelastic assumptions, which is 36.7 Pa for both elastic and hyperelastic models. CONCLUSION: The aneurysm region in the MFS affects the blood flow and causes the vortex to be generated which consequently affects the blood flow in the downstream by adding some perturbations to the blood flow. The WSS is obtained to be lower in the aneurysm region compared to other regions which indicated vascular remodeling.

Investigating the performance of four specific types of material grafts and their effects on hemodynamic patterns as well as on von Mises stresses in a grafted three-layer aortic model using fluid-structure interaction analysis.

One of the important parts of the cardiac system is aorta which is the fundamental channel and supply of oxygenated blood in the body. Diseases of the aorta represent critical cardiovascular bleakness and mortality around the world. This study aims at investigation of hemodynamic parameters in a two-dimensional axisymmetric model of three-layer grafted aorta using fluid-structure interaction (FSI). It assumes that a damaged part of aorta, which may happen as a result of some diseases like aneurysm, dissection and post-stenotic dilatation, is replaced with a biomaterial graft. Four types of grafts materials so-called Polyurethane, Silicone rubber, Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and Dacron are considered in the present study. The assumption of linear elastic and isotropic material is set for the both aorta's wall and aforementioned grafts. Blood is considered as an incompressible and Newtonian fluid. The results indicate higher displacement in Polyurethane and silicone rubber in comparison with other two. Furthermore, results reveal that blood flow velocity has slightly higher values in PTFE and Dacron grafted models compared to Polyurethane and Silicone rubber ones. Even though there are some differences in hemodynamic patterns in these grafted models, they are not considerable as much as von Mises stresses across the graft-aorta intersections are. This study shows that the types of material grafts play an important role in the amount of stresses particularly at intersections of aorta and graft.

A Combination of Constitutive Damage Model and Artificial Neural Networks to Characterize the Mechanical Properties of the Healthy and Atherosclerotic Human Coronary Arteries.

It has been indicated that the content and structure of the elastin and collagen of the arterial wall can subject to a significant alteration due to the atherosclerosis. Consequently, a high tissue stiffness, stress, and even damage/rupture are triggered in the arterial wall. Although many studies so far have been conducted to quantify the mechanical properties of the coronary arteries, none of them consider the role of collagen damage of the healthy and atherosclerotic human coronary arterial walls. Recently, a fiber family-based constitutive equation was proposed to capture the anisotropic mechanical response of the healthy and atherosclerotic human coronary arteries via both the histostructural and uniaxial data. In this study, experimental mechanical measurements along with histological data of the healthy and atherosclerotic arterial walls were employed to determine the constitutive damage parameters and remodeling of the collagen fibers. To do this, the preconditioned arterial tissues were excised from human cadavers within 5-h postmortem, and the mean angle of their collagen fibers was precisely determined. Thereafter, a group of quasistatic axial and circumferential loadings were applied to the arterial walls, and the constrained nonlinear minimization method was employed to identify the arterial parameters according to the axial and circumferential extension data. The remodeling of the collagen fibers during the tensile test was also predicted via Artificial Neural Networks algorithm. Regardless of loading direction, the results presented a noteworthy load-bearing capability and stiffness of the atherosclerotic arteries compared to the healthy ones (P < 0.005). Theoretical fiber angles were found to be consistent with the experimental histological data with less than 2 and 5° difference for the healthy and atherosclerotic arterial walls, respectively. The pseudoelastic damage model data were also compared with that of the experimental data, and interestingly, the arterial mechanical behavior for both the primary loading (up to the elastic region) and the discontinuous softening (up to the ultimate stress) was well addressed. The proposed model predicted well the mechanical response of the arterial tissue considering the damage of collagen fibers for both the healthy and atherosclerotic arterial walls.

Haemodynamic of blood flow through stenotic aortic valve.

Aortic valve (AV) stenosis is described as the deposition of calcium within the valve leaflets. With the growth of stenosis, haemodynamic, mechanical performances of the AV and blood flow through the valve are changed. In this study, we proposed two fluid-structure interaction (FSI) finite element (FE) models. The hyperelastic material model was considered for leaflets tissue. The leaflet tissue was considered stiffer in stenotic valve than the healthy leaflets because of its calcium content. Therefore, the valve could not open completely and this led to a decrease in the orifice area of the valve. The orifice area decreased from 2.4 cm2 for the healthy AV to 1.4 cm2 for the stenosis case. Mean pressure gradient increased in mid systole and the axial velocity experienced a three times increment in magnitude. Higher blood shear stress magnitudes were observed in stenotic valve due to the structure of the leaflet. In addition, strain concentration and higher stress values were observed on the leaflets in stenotic valve and the effective stress was greater than healthy case. In addition, pressure and velocity results were consistent with the echocardiography data literature. We have compared the performance of healthy and stenotic AV models during a complete cardiac cycle. Although improvements are still needed, there was good agreement between our computed data and other published studies.

A combination of experimental and numerical methods to investigate the role of strain rate on the mechanical properties and collagen fiber orientations of the healthy and atherosclerotic human coronary arteries.

Atherosclerosis enables to alter not only the microstructural but also the physical properties of the arterial walls by plaque forming. Few studies so far have been conducted to calculate the isotropic or anisotropic mechanical properties of the healthy and atherosclerotic human coronary arteries. To date there is a paucity of knowledge on the mechanical response of the arteries under different strain rates. Therefore, the objective of the concurrent research was to comprehend whether the alteration in the strain rates of the human atherosclerotic arteries in comparison with the healthy ones contribute to the biomechanical behaviors. To do this, healthy and atherosclerotic human coronary arteries were removed from 18 individuals during autopsy. Histological analyses by both an expert histopathologist and an imaged-based recognizer software were performed to figure out the average angle of collagen fibers in the healthy and atherosclerotic arterial walls. Thereafter, the samples were subjected to 3 diverse strain rates, i.e., 5, 20, and 50 mm/min, until the material failure occurs. The stress-strain diagrams of the arterial tissues were calculated in order to capture their linear elastic and nonlinear hyperelastic mechanical properties. In addition, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) was employed to predict the alteration of mean angle of collagen fibers during load bearing up to failure. The findings suggest that strain rate has a significant (p < 0.05) role in the linear elastic and nonlinear hyperelastic mechanical properties as well as the mean angle of collagen fibers of the atherosclerotic arteries, whereas no specific impact on the healthy ones. Furthermore, the mean angle of collagen fibers during the load bearing up to the failure at each strain rate was well predicted by the proposed ANNs code.

Computing the influences of different Intraocular Pressures on the human eye components using computational fluid-structure interaction model.

BACKGROUND: Intraocular Pressure (IOP) is defined as the pressure of aqueous in the eye. It has been reported that the normal range of IOP should be within the 10-20 mmHg with an average of 15.50 mmHg among the ophthalmologists. Keratoconus is an anti-inflammatory eye disorder that debilitated cornea unable to reserve the normal structure contrary to the IOP in the eye. Consequently, the cornea would bulge outward and invoke a conical shape following by distorted vision. In addition, it is known that any alterations in the structure and composition of the lens and cornea would exceed a change of the eye ball as well as the mechanical and optical properties of the eye. OBJECTIVE: Understanding the precise alteration of the eye components' stresses and deformations due to different IOPs could help elucidate etiology and pathogenesis to develop treatments not only for keratoconus but also for other diseases of the eye. METHODS: In this study, at three different IOPs, including 10, 20, and 30 mmHg the stresses and deformations of the human eye components were quantified using a Three-Dimensional (3D) computational Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) model of the human eye. RESULTS: The results revealed the highest amount of von Mises stress in the bulged region of the cornea with 245 kPa at the IOP of 30 mmHg. The lens was also showed the von Mises stress of 19.38 kPa at the IOPs of 30 mmHg. In addition, by increasing the IOP from 10 to 30 mmHg, the radius of curvature in the cornea and lens was increased accordingly. In contrast, the sclera indicated its highest stress at the IOP of 10 mmHg due to over pressure phenomenon. The variation of IOP illustrated a little influence in the amount of stress as well as the resultant displacement of the optic nerve. CONCLUSION: These results can be used for understanding the amount of stresses and deformations in the human eye components due to different IOPs as well as for clarifying significant role of IOP on the radius of curvature of the cornea and the lens.

Computing the stresses and deformations of the human eye components due to a high explosive detonation using fluid-structure interaction model.

INTRODUCTION: In spite the fact that a very small human body surface area is comprised by the eye, its wounds due to detonation have recently been dramatically amplified. Although many efforts have been devoted to measure injury of the globe, there is still a lack of knowledge on the injury mechanism due to Primary Blast Wave (PBW). The goal of this study was to determine the stresses and deformations of the human eye components, including the cornea, aqueous, iris, ciliary body, lens, vitreous, retina, sclera, optic nerve, and muscles, attributed to PBW induced by trinitrotoluene (TNT) explosion via a Lagrangian-Eulerian computational coupling model. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) was employed to establish a Finite Element (FE) model of the human eye according to a normal human eye. The solid components of the eye were modelled as Lagrangian mesh, while an explosive TNT, air domain, and aqueous were modelled using Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) mesh. Nonlinear dynamic FE simulations were accomplished using the explicit FE code, namely LS-DYNA. In order to simulate the blast wave generation, propagation, and interaction with the eye, the ALE formulation with Jones-Wilkins-Lee (JWL) equation defining the explosive material were employed. RESULTS: The results revealed a peak stress of 135.70kPa brought about by detonation upsurge on the cornea at the distance of 25cm. The highest von Mises stresses were observed on the sclera (267.3kPa), whereas the lowest one was seen on the vitreous body (0.002kPa). The results also showed a relatively high resultant displacement for the macula as well as a high variation for the radius of curvature for the cornea and lens, which can result in both macular holes, optic nerve damage and, consequently, vision loss. CONCLUSION: These results may have implications not only for understanding the value of stresses and strains in the human eye components but also giving an outlook about the process of PBW triggers damage to the eye.

Dynamic finite element simulation of the gunshot injury to the human forehead protected by polyvinyl alcohol sponge.

Although there are some traditional models of the gunshot wounds, there is still a need for more modeling analyses due to the difficulties related to the gunshot wounds to the forehead region of the human skull. In this study, the degree of damage as a consequence of penetrating head injuries due to gunshot wounds was determined using a preliminary finite element (FE) model of the human skull. In addition, the role of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) sponge, which can be used as an alternative to reinforce the kinetic energy absorption capacity of bulletproof vest and helmet materials, to minimize the amount of skull injury due to penetrating processes was investigated through the FE model. Digital computed tomography along with magnetic resonance imaging data of the human head were employed to launch a three-dimensional (3D) FE model of the skull. Two geometrical shapes of projectiles (steel ball and bullet) were simulated for penetrating with an initial impact velocity of 734 m/s using nonlinear dynamic modeling code, namely LS-DYNA. The role of the damaged/distorted elements were removed during computation when the stress or strain reached their thresholds. The stress distributions in various parts of the forehead and sponge after injury were also computed. The results revealed the same amount of stress for both the steel ball and bullet after hitting the skull. The modeling results also indicated the time that steel ball takes to penetrate into the skull is lower than that of the bullet. In addition, more than 21% of the steel ball's kinetic energy was absorbed by the PVA sponge and, subsequently, injury sternness of the forehead was considerably minimized. The findings advise the application of the PVA sponge as a substitute strengthening material to be able to diminish the energy of impact as well as the load transmitted to the object.

A multi-channel acoustics monitor for perioperative respiratory monitoring: preliminary data.

This study pertains to a six-channel acoustic monitoring system for use in patient monitoring during or after surgery. The base hardware consists of a USB data acquisition system, a custom-built six-channel amplification system, and a series of microphones of various designs. The software is based on the MATLAB platform with data acquisition drivers installed. The displayed information includes: time domain signals, frequency domain signals, and tools to aid in the detection of endobronchial intubation. We hypothesize that the above mentioned arrangement may be helpful to the anesthesiologist in recognizing clinical conditions like wheezing, bronchospasm, endobronchial intubation, and apnea. The study also evaluated various types of microphone designs used to transduce breath sounds. The system also features selectable band-pass filtering using MATLAB algorithms as well as a collection of recordings obtained with the system to establish what respiratory acoustic signals look like under various conditions.

A computational fluid-structure interaction model of the blood flow in the healthy and varicose saphenous vein.

OBJECTIVE: Varicose vein has become enlarged and twisted and, consequently, has lost its mechanical strength. As a result of the varicose saphenous vein (SV) mechanical alterations, the hemodynamic parameters of the blood flow, such as blood velocity as well as vein wall stress and strain, would change accordingly. However, little is known about stress and strain and there consequences under experimental conditions on blood flow and velocity within normal and varicose veins. In this study, a three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid-structure interaction (FSI) model of a human healthy and varicose SVs was established to determine the hemodynamic characterization of the blood flow as a function of vein wall mechanical properties, i.e. elastic and hyperelastic. METHODS: The mechanical properties of the human healthy and varicose SVs were experimentally measured and implemented into the computational model. The fully coupled fluid and structure models were solved using the explicit dynamics finite element code LS-DYNA. RESULTS: The results revealed that, regardless of healthy and varicose, the elastic walls reach to the ultimate strength of the vein wall, whereas the hyperelastic wall can tolerate more stress. The highest von Mises stress compared to the healthy ones was seen in the elastic and hyperelastic varicose SVs with 1.412 and 1.535 MPa, respectively. In addition, analysis of the resultant displacement in the vein wall indicated that the varicose SVs experienced a higher displacement compared to the healthy ones irrespective of elastic and hyperelastic material models. The highest blood velocity was also observed for the healthy hyperelastic SV wall. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study may have implications not only for determining the role of the vein wall mechanical properties in the hemodynamic alterations of the blood, but also for employing as a null information in balloon-angioplasty and bypass surgeries.

A comparative study on the mechanical properties of the healthy and varicose human saphenous vein under uniaxial loading.

Saphenous Vein (SV) due to fatness, age, inactiveness, etc. can be afflicted with varicose. The main reason of the varicose vein is believed to be related to the leg muscle pump which is unable to return the blood to the heart in contradiction of the effect of gravity. As a result of the varicose vein, both the structure and mechanical properties of the vein wall would alter. However, so far there is a lack of knowledge on the mechanical properties of the varicose vein. In this study, a comparative study was carried out to measure the elastic and hyperelastic mechanical properties of the healthy and varicose SVs. Healthy and varicose SVs were removed at autopsy and surgery from seven individuals and then axial tensile load was applied to them up to the failure point. In order to investigate the mechanical behaviour of the vein, this study was benefitted from three different stress definitions, such as 2nd Piola-Kichhoff, engineering and true stresses and four different strain definitions, i.e. Almansi-Hamel, Green-St. Venant, engineering and true strains, to determine the linear mechanical properties of the SVs. A Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique was used to measure the true strain of the vein walls during load bearing. The non-linear mechanical behaviour of the SVs was also computationally evaluated via the Mooney-Rivlin material model. The true/Cauchy stress-strain diagram exhibited the elastic modulus of the varicose SVs as 45.11% lower than that of the healthy ones. Furthermore, by variation of the stress a significant alteration on the maximum stress of the healthy SVs was observed, but then not for the varicose veins. Additionally, the highest stresses of 4.99 and 0.65 MPa were observed for the healthy and varicose SVs, respectively. These results indicate a weakness in the mechanical strength of the SV when it becomes varicose, owing to the degradation of the elastin and collagen content of the SV. The Mooney-Rivlin hyperelastic and the Finite Element (FE) data were finally well compared to the experimental data.

An experimental-nonlinear finite element study of a balloon expandable stent inside a realistic stenotic human coronary artery to investigate plaque and arterial wall injury.

The stresses induced within plaque tissues and arterial layers during stent expansion inside an atherosclerotic artery can be exceeded from the yield stresses of those tissues and, consequently, lead to plaque or arterial wall rupture. The distribution and magnitude of the stresses in the plaque-artery-stent structure might be distinctly different for different plaque types. In this study, the mechanical properties of six healthy and atherosclerotic human coronary arteries were determined for application in plaque and arterial vulnerability assessment. A nonlinear finite element simulation based on an Ogden material model was established to investigate the effect of plaque types on the stresses induced in the arterial wall during implantation of a balloon expandable coronary stent. The atherosclerotic artery was assumed to consist of a plaque and normal arterial tissues on its outer side. The results indicated a significant influence of plaque types on the maximum stresses induced within the plaque wall and arterial wall during stenting but not when computing maximum stress on the stent. The stress on the stiffest calcified plaque wall was 3.161 MPa, whereas cellular and hypocellular plaques showed relatively less stress on their wall. The highest von Mises stresses within the arterial wall were observed on the hypocellular plaque, whereas the lowest stresses were seen to be located in the calcified and cellular plaques. Although the computed stresses on the arterial wall for the calcified and cellular plaques were not high enough to invoke a rupture, the stress on the hypocellular plaque was relatively higher than that of the strength of the arterial wall. These findings may have implications not only for understanding the stresses induced in plaque and the arterial wall, but also for developing surgeries such as balloon-angioplasty and stenting.

Wall stress in media layer of stented three-layered aortic aneurysm at different intraluminal thrombus locations with pulsatile heart cycle.

At the point when the aorta ruptures suddenly, as opposed to as the after-effect of injury, it is for the most part in aortic aneurysm. Aortic aneurysm rupture happens when the wall stress surpasses the strength of the vascular tissue. Intraluminal thrombus (ILT) may have advantages as it can absorb tension and decrease aortic aneurysm wall stress. This study aims to investigate the presence and growth effects of ILT on the wall stress in a stented aneurysm in one heart cycle. A virtual stented aneurysm model with ILT was made to study the flow and wall dynamics using fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis. Wall stresses at the center line of media layer of aorta thickness were calculated by two-dimensional axisymmetric finite element analysis. Calculations were executed as thrombus elastic modulus increased from 0.1 to 2 MPa and calculations were repeated as thrombus depth was increased in 10% increment until thrombus filled the whole aneurysm cavity. The von Mises stresses were compared in three sections, namely proximal, aneurysm and distal sections in the abdominal aorta. The wall stress showed its maximum value during a peak flow and pressure and gradually decreased as the pressure and velocity of blood reduced in all three aforementioned sections. As the intraluminal thrombus depth increased from 10% to 100%, the wall stress in distal, proximal and centre of aneurysm during one heart cycle was decreased. Furthermore, increasing the elastic modulus of thrombus from 10% to 100% triggered a reduction in wall stress in proximal, centre of intraluminal thrombus and distal regions during one heart cycle. The achievements of this study may have implications not only for understanding the wall stress in ILT, but also for providing more detailed information about aortic aneurysm with intraluminal thrombus and can help surgeons to do their best.

Mechanical characterization of the rat and mice skin tissues using histostructural and uniaxial data.

The skin tissue has been shown to behave like a nonlinear anisotropic material. This study was aimed to employ a constitutive fiber family equation to characterize the nonlinear anisotropic mechanical behavior of the rat and mice skin tissues in different anatomical locations, including the abdomen and back, using histostructural and uniaxial data. The rat and mice skin tissues were excised from the animals' body and then the histological analyses were performed on each skin type to determine the mean fiber orientation angle. Afterward, the preconditioned skin tissues were subjected to a series of quasi-static axial and circumferential loads until the incidence of failure. The crucial role of fiber orientation was explicitly added into a proposed strain energy density function. The material coefficients were determined using the constrained nonlinear optimization method based on the axial and circumferential extension data of the rat and mice samples at different anatomical locations. The material coefficients of the skins were given with R(2) ≥ 0.998. The results revealed a significant load-bearing capacity and stiffness of the rat abdomen compared to the rat back tissues. In addition, the mice abdomen showed a higher stiffness in the axial direction in comparison with circumferential one, while the mice back displayed its highest stiffness in the circumferential direction. The material coefficients of the rat and mice skin tissues were determined and well compared to the experimental data. The optimized fiber angles were also compared to the experimental histological data, and in all cases less than 11.85% differences were observed in both the skin tissues.