Abstract
Rupture of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) occurs when the wall stress acting on the dilated aortic wall exceeds the strength of the tissue. Therefore, accurate estimation of the wall stress distribution in AAA may be a clinically useful tool to predict their rupture. A majority of AAA contains a laminated, stationary, intraluminal thrombus (ILT) (Harter et al., 1982). Previous investigations have shown that ILT may significantly alter the wall stress acting on AAA (Inzoli et al., 1993; Mower et al., 1997; Stringfellow et al., 1987; Vorp et al., 1998; Di Martino et al., 1998). However, all of those studies used a simplified linear elastic model for ILT. This is inappropriate and can lead to inaccuracies since both AAA wall and contained ILT undergo large deformation during the cardiac cycle (Vorp et al., 1996). Therefore, to accomplish accurate stress analysis of AAA, appropriate constitutive models for both the wall and ILT are necessary. Our group has previously proposed a finite strain constitutive model for the AAA wall (Raghavan et al., in press). The purpose of this work was to derive a more suitable constitutive model and the associated mechanical properties for the ILT within AAA.
