Material Characterization of Aortic Tissue for Traumatic Injury and Buckling

Abstract

While traumatic aortic injury (TAI) and rupture (TAR) continue to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality in motor vehicle accidents, its underlying mechanisms are still not well understood. Different mechanisms such as increase in intraluminal pressure, relative movement of aorta with respect to mediastinal structures, direct impact to bony structures have been proposed as contributing factors to TAI/TAR. At the tissue level, TAI is assumed to be the result of a complex state of supra-physiological, high rate, and multi-axial loading. A major step to gain insight into the mechanisms of TAI is a characterization of the aortic tissue mechanical and failure properties under loading conditions that resemble traumatic events. While the mechanical behavior of arteries in physiological conditions have been investigated by many researchers, this dissertation was motivated by the scarcity of reported data on supra-physiological and high rate loading conditions of aorta. Material properties of the porcine aortic tissue were characterized and a Fung-type constitutive model was developed based on ex-vivo inflation-extension of aortic segments with intraluminal pressures covering a range from physiological to supra-physiological (70 kPa). The convexity of the material constitutive model was preserved to ensure numerical stability. The increase in ë_è from physiological pressure (13 kPa) to 70 kPa was 13% at the outer wall and 22% at the inner wall while in this pressure range, the longitudinal stretch ratio ë_z increased 20%. A significant nonlinearity in the material behavior was observed as in the same pressure range, the circumferential and longitudinal Cauchy stresses at the inner wall were increased 16 and 18 times respectively. The effect of strain-rate on the mechanical behavior and failure properties of the tissue was characterized using uniaxial extension experiments in circumferential and longitudinal directions at nominal strain rates of 0.3, 3, 30 and 400 s-1. Two distinct states of failure initiation (FI) and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) were identified at both directions. Explicit direct relationships were derived between FI and UTS stresses and strain rate. On the other hand, FI and UTS strains were rate independent and therefore strain was proposed as the main mechanism of failure. On average, engineering strain at FI was 0.85±0.03 for circumferential direction and 0.58±0.02 for longitudinal direction. The engineering strain at UTS was not different between the two directions and reached 0.89±0.03 on average. Tissue pre-failure linear moduli showed an average of 60% increase over the range of strain rates. Using the developed material model, mechanical stability of aorta was studied by varying the loading parameters for two boundary conditions, namely pinned-pinned boundary condition (PPBC) and clamped-clamped boundary condition (CCBC). The critical pressure for CCBC was three times higher than PPBC. It was shown that the relatively free segment of aorta at the isthmus region may become unstable before reaching the peak intraluminal pressures that occur during a trauma. The mechanical instability mechanism was proposed as a contributing factor to TAI, where elevations in tissue stresses and strains due to buckling may increase the risk of injury.