An FEA method to study flexibility of expanded coronary stents

The purpose of this paper is to show how finite element analysis can be used to research flexibility of expanded stainless steel coronary stents. With multipoint constraint elements (MPC), uniform bending moment was applied to a unit model of a commercial tubular stent. Bending stiffness was measured as 16.8 and 1.1 N mm2 rad−1 for elastic and plastic deformation, respectively. Furthermore, a complete model of the same stent was bent under multiple moment loadings to test the general application of the method and the result accorded with the expectation. In conclusion, this finite element analysis (FEA) bending method can be used to study and compare flexibility of different stents, and provides a convenient tool for designers to pretest and improve bending characteristics of new stents.