Rupture properties of blood vessel walls measured by pressure-imposed test

It is expected to be clinically useful to know the mechanical properties of human aortic aneurysms in assessing the potential for aneurysm rupture. For this purpose, a newly designed experimental setup was fabricated to measure the rupture properties of blood vessel walls. A square specimen of porcine thoracic aortas is inflated by air pressure at a rate of 10 mmHg/s (≈ 1.3 MPa/s) until rupture occurs. Mean breaking stress was 1.8±0.4 MPa (mean±SD) for the specimens proximal to the heart and 2.3± 0.8 MPa for the distal specimens, which are not significantly different to those values obtained longitudinally from conventional tensile tests. Moreover, the local breaking stretch ratio in the longitudinal direction was significantly higher at the ruptured site (2.7±0.5) than at the unruptured site (2.2±0.4). This testing system for studying the rupture properties of aortic walls is expected to be applicable to aortic aneurysms. Experimental verification of the present technique for the homogeneous, isotropic material is also presented.