A structural multi-mechanism constitutive equation for cerebral arterial tissue

A structural multi-mechanism constitutive equation is developed to describe the nonlinear, anisotropic, inelastic mechanical behavior of cerebral arterial tissue. Elastin and collagen fibers are treated as separate components (mechanisms) of the artery. Elastin is responsible for load bearing at low strain levels while the collagen mechanism is recruited for load bearing at higher strain levels. This work builds on an earlier model in which both the elastin and collagen mechanisms are represented by isotropic response functions Wulandana, R., Robertson, A.M., 2005. An inelastic multi-mechanism constitutive equation for cerebral arterial tissue. Biomech. Model. Mechan. 4 (4), 235–248]. Here, the anisotropic material response of the wall is introduced through the collagen mechanism which is composed of helically distributed families of fibers. The orientation of these families is described using either a finite number of fiber orientations or a fiber distribution function. The fiber orientation or dispersion function can be prescribed directly from arterial histology data, or, taking a phenomenological approach, based on data fitting from bi-axial measurements. The activation of the collagen mechanism is specified using a new fiber strain based activation criterion. The multi-mechanism constitutive equation is applied to the simple case of cylindrical inflation and material constants are determined based on available inelastic experimental data for cerebral arteries. While the proposed model captures all features of this inelastic data, there is a pressing need for further experiments to refine the model.