Anisotropic damage of soft tissues in supra-physiological deformations

Soft tissues may undergo mechanical damage under supra-physiological deformations caused by medical treatments such as balloon-angioplasty and stent deployment. This damage is exhibited as a softening in the mechanical behavior of tissues. In this work, alteration of the collagen network is treated as the origin of damage and loss of stiffness. Inspired by the hierarchical structure of the collagen network, the mechanical properties of collagenous tissues are connected to model parameters. Softening of esophageal and arterial tissues under directional cyclic loading is investigated to determine evolution of the associated material parameters through damage progress. An evolution law is proposed which predicts the mechanical behavior of tissues after excessive deformations. Various deformation measures are examined as the damage parameter to determine the most appropriate one for general 3D loading. It is observed that, if the Green-Lagrange strain in the direction of the fibers is used as the damage parameter, the proposed law well describes the evolution of the collagen network’s stiffness. The results not only facilitate prediction of the deformation-induced damage under supra-physiological deformations but also are useful for surgeons in better planning of surgical procedures and stents design.