Residual stress in swine iliac arteries

Arteries have been demonstrated to have residual stresses when there is no load acting on the vascular segment. It has been shown previously, that in the absence of external load in the form of transmural pressure, the stress-free state of the artery consists of open sector segments with widely varying opening angles depending upon the location of the segment in vivo. In order to assess the importance of the residual stress in characterizing the mechanical properties of the artery under physiological loading, it is necessary to compute the distribution of residual stress and strain in the vascular segment in its physiological configuration without any external load. This paper describes a finite element computation of strains and stresses in the wall of vascular segments when the segment is deformed from its stress-free state to the physiological cylindrical shape in the absence of external load.