Experimental Investigation of Mechanical and Structural Inhomogeneity in Bovine Carotid Arteries Available to Purchase

Many constitutive models have been proposed to assess arterial mechanical behavior. Most, however, are largely phenomenological and lack a detailed consideration of arterial wall constituents and the manner in which mechanical loads are distributed amongst them. Recently, strain energy functions (SEF) that consider histological evidence about arterial wall structure have been developed [1,2]. These SEFs incorporate fiber bundle orientation and consider the relative proportions of the major wall constituents to offer a better description of arterial wall deformation. Including histological structure and its affects on arterial elasticity could provide a better understanding of the relationship between arterial structure and function. Further shortcomings in arterial modeling include the assumption that the arterial wall is a homogeneous structure, when in fact it is well known to be a non homogenous, although there are notable exceptions [3,4].