Estimation of stress-strain relationships in vascular walls using multi-layer hyperelastic modelling approach

Determining the stiffness (or compliance) of biological vascular vessels is of importance when investigating pathological conditions, the design of stents, vascular grafts, distal anastomotic connectors in coronary artery bypass surgery, and understanding of biological pressure sensors. This communication is concerned with determining appropriate values of the material constants associated with a layered anisotropic hyperelastic constitutive model to estimate the mean stress for arterial and venous walls. Results show that the values of the material constants, determined from a constrained optimization approach, satisfying equilibrium, give rise to mean stress-strain states which are consistent with responses obtained from the standard averaged model.