Logo image
Back
Characteristics of thoracic aortic aneurysm rupture in vitro
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Characteristics of thoracic aortic aneurysm rupture in vitro

Yuanming Luo, Ambroise Duprey, Stéphane Avril and Jia Lu
Acta biomaterialia, Vol.42, pp.286-295
2016
DOI: 10.1016/j.actbio.2016.06.036
PMID: 27395826

View Online

Abstract

Ascending thoracic aortic aneurysms (ATAAs) are focal dilatations in the aorta that are prone to rupture or dissection. To accurately evaluate the rupture risk, one must know the local mechanical conditions at the rupture site and understand how rupture is triggered in a layered fibrous media. A challenge facing experimental studies of ATAA rupture is that the ATAA tissue is highly heterogeneous; experimental protocols that operate under the premise of tissue homogeneity will have difficulty delineating the location conditions. In this work, we employed a previously established pointwise identification method to characterize wall stress, strain, and property distributions to a sub-millimeter resolution. Based on the acquired field data, we obtained the local mechanical properties at the rupture site in nine ATAA tissue samples. The rupture stress, ultimate strain, energy density, and the toughness of the tested samples were also reported. Our results show that the direction of the rupture is aligned with the direction of maximum stiffness, indicating that higher stiffness is not always related to higher strength. It was also found that the rupture generally occurs at a location of highest stored energy. As a higher stiffness and higher strain energy indicate a larger recruitment of collagen fibers in the tissue at the location and along the direction of rupture, the recruitment of collagen fibers in the deformation of the tissue is probably essential in ATAA rupture.
 Biomechanics Mechanics Engineering Sciences

Details

Metrics

27 Record Views
25 Times Cited - Web of Science
Logo image