An Analytical Study on Mechanical Behavior of Human Arteries – A Nonlinear Elastic Double Layer Model

The focus of this article is on analytical solution for stress and deformation of human arteries. The artery is considered as a long homogeneous isotropic cylinder. Hyperelastic, incompressible stress-strain behavior is used by adopting a classical Mooney-Rivlin material model. The elastic constants of the arteries are calculated by using the reported results of biaxial test. The analysis is based on both single and double layer arterial wall models and. Radial and circumferential stress distribution on the minimum and maximum blood pressure is calculated. Variation of radii due to internal pressure within the arteries is found which is in a good accordance with the experimental results. The results containing the changes in diameter and thickness together with the stress distribution for both single and double layer models have been plotted. It is shown that the major difference between the single and double layer models is in their stress distributions. The circumferential stress distribution for different human’s ages is plotted which shows that the stress increases by increasing the age due to decreasing the flexibility of the artery. It is also shown that despite the artery’s inner layer is softer than the outer layer, the maximum stresses occur at the inner layer.