UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine, Stratford, New Jersey, U. S. A.
NJIT, Newark, New Jersey, U. S. A.
The effects of residual stresses and strains on the transmural distribution of stresses in the arterial wall of oscillating thoracic artery of the rabbit have been examined under physiolgical conditions. A static theory of large deformations valid for orthotropic material of the artery with the inertia term added to make the theory dynamic has been employed,so that oscillations of the artery are taken into account.Our analysis reveals that the effect of considering residul stresses is to decrease the very large hoop stresses at the inner wall as well as to decrease the stress gradient through the wall, compared to the case when residual stresses are ignored.Thus because the arteries do contain residual stresses, the consequent reduction of stresses may reduce the progression of atheroma.
The main purpose of examining the role of residual stresses on stress distribution is to couple the resulting euations for stress distrubution with the equations for unsteady blood flow of a collapsible tube in order to find the role of residual stresses on blood flow in areteries.