The influence of textile vascular prosthesis crimping on graft longitudinal elasticity and flexibility

Textile vascular prostheses are the principal substitute for the replacement of large vascular arteries. These prostheses undergo a thermal treatment of crimping inducing a wavy shape of the graft wall. Today mechanical properties of crimped vascular prostheses are not well known. After implantation, vascular prostheses are exposed to several longitudinal forces due to blood pressure, inducing their deformation during the cardiac cycle. In arteries that undergo large bending deformation, the flexibility is a necessary feature of vascular prostheses. In the present work, a longitudinal tensile model and a bending model of woven vascular prosthesis are numerically simulated. The obtained results provide a better understanding of the impact of the crimping parameters on the longitudinal elasticity and the bending stiffness of the textile vascular prosthesis. Mathematical predictive models of longitudinal elasticity and bending stiffness of the textile prosthesis have been developed, allowing relating the prosthesis elasticity and flexibility with the crimping parameters.

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► Measurements and FE simulations of the tensile and bending mechanical properties of crimped PET vascular grafts.
► Effect of crimping parameters on longitudinal and bending elasticity using the design of experiments.
► Adjustment of vascular graft parameters to match the mechanical response of a human artery.
► Design and optimization of vascular grafts.