Constitutive Modeling of the Arterial Wall

In this lecture, we will cover the fundamental concepts behind constitutive modeling of the arterial wall. We will begin with a brief description of the arterial wall structure, focusing on the behavior of elastine and collagene, the components responsible for the passive mechanical strength of the wall. We will then briefly review some fundamentals in continuum mechanics, necessary for discussing nonlinear elastic constitutive equations used for modeling the arterial wall. This will be followed by a discussion of some of the most commonly used nonlinear constitutive models as well as a novel inelastic model introduced in our research group. We will then cover some commonly used experimental methods for measuring material constants found in the nonlinear models. We will end with a discussion of some outstanding problems in the field.