An intriguing design concept to enhance the pulsatile fatigue life of self-expanding stents
Journal
Biomedical Microdevices
Journal Volume
16
Journal Issue
1
Pages
133-141
Date Issued
2014
Author(s)
Abstract
Intravascular stenting has emerged as the primary treatment for vascular diseases and has received great attention from the medical community since its introduction two decades ago. The endovascular self-expanding stent is used to treat peripheral artery diseases; however, once implanted, these stents suffer from various cyclic motions caused by pulsatile blood pressure and daily activities. Due to this challenging environment, fatigue performance has become a critical issue for stent design. In this paper, a simple yet intriguing concept of stent design aimed at enhancing pulsatile fatigue life is investigated. The concept of this design is to shift the highly concentrated stresses/strains away from the crown and re-distribute them along the stress-free bar arm by tapering its strut width. Finite element models were developed to evaluate the mechanical integrity and pulsatile fatigue resistance of the stent to various loading conditions. Results show that the fatigue safety factor jumped to 2.5-3.0 times that of the standard stent with constant strut width. This is astonishing considering that the stent profile and scaffolding were not compromised. The findings of this paper provide an excellent approach to the optimization of future stent design to greatly improve stent fatigue performance. ? 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.
Subjects
Fatigue life analysis; Finite element analysis; Peripheral artery diseases; Pulsatile fatigue life; Self-expanding stent
SDGs
Other Subjects
Computer Simulation; Equipment Design; Equipment Failure; Humans; Models, Theoretical; Pulsatile Flow; Stents; Stress, Mechanical
Type
journal article