Effect of Deformation Rate on the Mechanical Properties of Rectangular and Cruciform Arterial Samples: Uniaxial and Biaxial Testing

The elastic behavior of arteries is nonlinear when subjected to large deformations. In order to measure their anisotropic behavior, planar biaxial tests are often used. Uniaxial tests are also commonly used due to simplicity of data analysis, but their capability to fully describe the in vivo behavior of a tissue remains to be proven. Mechanical behaviour of arteries submitted to uniaxial or biaxial testing has been done previously [1–4]. Each one of these works was performed only at one deformation rate: 1 %/s [1, 3], 10 %/s [2], 1 Hz [4]; but those works do not show the behaviour of the arterial wall when it is submitted to different deformation rates. Thus, in this study we present the effect of deformation rate in the material properties (i.e. loading forces) of uniaxial and biaxial tests.