科研之友
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摘要
The mechanical response of the elastin-water system in an artery wall is viscoelastic. Elastin in vivo must operate in the rubbery region, i.e., above the glass transition, that depends on moisture content. A dynamic multi-scale time-dependent evolution equation is presented for the mechanical response of the elastin-water system that captures the effect of moisture content on the glass transition of the elastin. To define non-equilibrium evolution processes, the construction requires only a hyperelastic strain energy density function describing the long-term behavior and the thermodynamic relaxation modulus that describes the relaxation speed of non-equilibrium processes. The thermodynamic relaxation modulus also relates spatial scales, the molecular scale including moisture bonding to the bulk material scale. The model reproduces published experimental data on the elastin glass transition behavior with respect to load frequency and to ambient relative humidity but is not merely empirical in the sense of being a fit to such data because it predicts dynamic responses such as non-physiological creep and physiological rate-dependent stress-stretch relations. The new viscoelastic model predicts the influence of moisture content and the glass transition of the elastin on the time-dependent response of the circumferential stretch and the change in radius of a hydrated arterial cylindrical elastin lamella under cyclic radial pressure loads in the hemodynamic range. Such an elastin cylinder approximates the behavior of the elastin substructure in an elastic artery wall.
- 出版日期2010-8
