Blood vessel properties

Blood Vessel Structure

Composition of each layer of a blood vessel

Intima: Innermost layer Contains endothelial cells Basal lamina (80 nm thick) Subendothelial layer with collagenous bundles, some elastin Media: Middle Layer Contains mainly smooth muscle cells Collagenous fibrils (type III collagen) Divided from adventia by elastin layer (elastin is a protein which is very elastic, can undergo a stretch ratio of 1.6, about 80% strain) Adventia: Outermost layer Collagen fibers (mainly type III, differ in amino acid sequence from I and II) Ground substance Fibroblasts

Percentage of all the components

Blood Vessel Mechanical Characterization and Structure-Function

stress strain curve from a human vena cava

Collagen contributed mainly to the linear region of the nonlinear stress-strain curve Elastin contributed mainly to the toe part of the stress-strain curve.

Residual stress
Even in the unloaded state, there is still stress in the artery. This state of residual stress is dependent on the thickness and the composition of the artery. As arteries are remodeled in response to mechanical stress, the amount of residual stress changes A mark of the amount of residual stress is how much the blood vessel will open when cut. Since the blood vessel is under stress, when we cut the vessel, the stress holding the vessel together is removed and the blood vessel springs open.

Residual stress
Different amounts of residual stress are present in different arteries

Residual stress

Change in opening angle of the artery, a measure of the change in residual stress. Early after exposure to higher pressure, the residual stress in the artery was greater than that of the controls. After prolonged exposure, the residual stress, as measured by the opening angle decreased, indicating that the adaptation changes had reduced the residual stress

 For a more quantitative description of blood vessel mechanics than toe versus linear region, blood vessel can be modeled as a pseudoelastic material using hyperelastic strain energy functions. In that case, the blood vessel is often described as a cylinder, with stress and strain represented using cylindrical coordinates. The 2nd Piola-Kirchoff stress tensor and Green-Lagrange strain tensor are used to represent the stress and strain in the blood vessel, respectively

These are denoted below:

Test set-up to test blood vessels from Fung's laboratory

The test set-up allows for torsional, tensile and pressure testing. The blood vessel itself must be kept in a saline bath during testing.

Strain energy function.

For a hyperelastic model, strain energy function are to be used. For blood vessel mechanics, there are two types of strain energy functions often used. The first form often used is the polynomial form, given below in terms of cylindrical Green-Lagrange strain components:
where A1 through A7 are material constants and the strains are the same as those described above.

The second form uses an exponential function:

The above forms neglect shear stress, assuming a very thin vessel. Stress is calculated by differentiating the strain energy function with respect to the strain components

Nonlinear Stress Strain Curves

As can be expected from differences in tissue structures, there are differences in the constants for the strain energy functions for different arteries. To gain some insight into how the coefficients in the strain energy function affect the shape of the stress strain curve the stress strain curve for the Carotid and Aorta arteries modeled using a polynomial strain energy function is plotted. The strain energy function is shown below:

Artery Carotid Upper Aorta

C (KPa) 2.9 3.38

a1 2.5 2.8

a2 .46 .52

a4 .176 .58

Sensitivity of stress
To see the sensitivity of stress derived from the strain energy function to the parameters in the strain energy function, constant C is changed from 2.9 to 3.9.
If a1 is increased from 2.5 to 4.5, we get the following graph:

Constants in the strain energy function change significantly. Material constants in proposed strain energy functions can be used to quantify changes in blood vessel function due to changes in structure. Thus, the strain energy function becomes a conduit to quantify structure-function of soft collagenous tissues just as the anisotropic Hooke's law is a way to quantify bone structure function relationships

Elastic properties

Measuring elastic properties