Post-EVAR damage-induced growth and remodelling in common iliac arteries
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Endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) is a widely used treatment technique for aneurysms. Endoleaks are, however, a typical complication following the EVAR procedure, essentially causing the necessity of secondary intervention. The endoleaks themselves are caused by either strictly mechanical reasons (e.g. modular disconnection of graft) or by substantial tissue growth that then expands the vessel. From the latter point of view, it is important to simulate and analyse both the procedure and subsequent growth and remodelling (G&R) of the vascular tissue. In the current study, we simulate the evolution of the common iliac artery following graft implementation. We employ a revised chemo-bio-mechanical model of G&R tightly linked to collagen fibres' unfolding under loading [1]. Using mean-population data of common iliac artery stiffness, we model the vessel as a double-layered fibre-reinforced structure. The initial residual stress field is captured by the gradient $\mathbf{F}_0$, a field efficiently identified through an iterative process [2]. As a result of a set of simulations, we analyse the risk of endoleak occurrence of a) initial graft deposition radii and b) degree of internal vascular calcification. The study was funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. REFERENCES [1] M. Gierig, P. Wriggers and M. Marino, Computational model of damage-induced growth in soft biological tissues considering the mechanobiology of healing. Biomech Model Mechanobiol, Vol. 20, pp. 1297–1315, 2021. [2] I.I. Tagiltsev and A.V. Shutov, Geometrically nonlinear modelling of pre-stressed viscoelastic fibre-reinforced composites with application to arteries. Biomech Model Mechanobiol, Vol. 20, pp. 323—337, 2021.