The Mechanical Behavior of a Balloon-Expandable Stent in a Stenotic Artery

The implantation of intravascular stent is a kind of coronary angioplasty to restore the blood flow perfusion to the downstream of the heart muscle tissue. Stent implantation is a mechanical procedure, the success of which depends to a good understanding of its mechanical behavior during the deployment. Computational studies may be used to investigate the mechanical behavior of stents and to determine the biomechanical interaction between the stent and the artery in a stenting procedure. The aim of this paper is to investigate the expansion characteristics of a certain stent as it is deployed and implanted in an artery containing a plaque, and try to reach to a model close to a real condition of stent implantation. Unlike most of the models proposed in the literature, all the steps of the deployment of a stent in the stenotic vessel (i.e. pressure increasing, constant load pressure and pressure decreasing) are simulated in this paper to show the behavior of stent in different stages of implantation. Results include stress distribution, radial gain, outer diameter changes, dogboning and foreshortening. According to the findings, the first step of deployment, i.e. pressure increasing, play a main role in the success of stent implantation.