This study concerns procedural aspects of planar biaxial experiments on aortic tissues that have not been exhaustively addressed in the literature. The following questions are explored. First, is there a difference in the apparent mechanical properties if the experiments are conducted in a force-controlled regime or a displacement-controlled regime. Second, does it matter whether the deformations of the surface are tracked from one side of the tissue or the other (luminal vs. abluminal surface). The study provides answers to these questions with the help of a series of experiments on porcine aortic tissue, constitutive modelling and statistical analysis. It was found that the loading protocol does not substantially affect the constitutive response, while the surface orientation does.

Department of Applied Mechanics VSB Technical University of Ostrava Ostrava Czech Republic

Department of Civil Engineering and Centre for Bioengineering Research and Education Schulich School of Engineering University of Calgary Calgary Canada

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Methodology for estimation of undeformed thickness of arterial tissues