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Numerical Modeling of a real Coronary Stent

Conference Paper · October 2012

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 NUMMERICAL MODELING OF A REAL
CORONARY STENT

M. Mihalev1 , Ch. Hardalov1, L. Vladimirova – Mihaleva2, P. Stefanov3,

V. Georgiev3, H. Dzherekarov3

1 Technical University of Sofia, Department of Applied Physics, 8 Kl. Ohridski blvd, Sofia, Bulgaria;
2 Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski”, Faculty of Physics, 5 J. Bourchier, Sofia, Bulgaria
3 ISMA Ltd, Sofia, Bulgaria
 Introduction
In many angioplasty procedures a stent must be placed in the artery in
order to keep the vessel opened enough. Its mechanical behavior is of special
importance, because it must is first deformed under pressure, then it have to
hold a preliminary assigned aperture.
On the market there are a large number of stent types with different
geometries and mechanical properties. The mechanical features of the stent
predetermine their therapeutic efficiency.
The modeling of the stent, one can receive information about the
behaviour under different pressures during the extension phase as well as after
the balloon is released. It gives information about the mechanical stent stability,
which can be used to improve the stent design and performance.
 Purpose
In this work elastoplastic model of the expansion and compression of a
real produced stent with special geometry made from stainless steel 316L are
presented. The diameters and length at different expansion pressures are
determined. It shown that at balloon pressure of 6 kPa the double diameter
has been reached, which is good agreement with the data from real mechanical
measurements. Von Mises parameter has been estimated, it was found smaller
then the critical value. Other parameters like dogboning, distal recoil parameter,
foreshortening have been also estimated.
All values are in good agreement with the result from other author on
imaginary stents as well as with the real laboratory measurement in the
certifying laboratory in Germany
 Materials and Methods
• 3D design
The 3D geometrical model has been developed using AutoCAD 2012 (for 2D unfolded
planar stent model) and SolidWorks. All curves were transformed in AutoCAD polylines. The
unit cell is shown in Figure 1. The cell was multiplied in order to fill a rectangular area with
the length 10 mm (stent length) and width 5,024 mm (2r, r = 1.575 mm after final treatment),
shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1. Unit cell Figure 2. Unfolded cylindrical face of the stent

Then a cylindric pipe with the stent radius and stent thickness has been created in
SolidWorks 2011. After unfolding of the cylinder the 2D sketch has been imported and the
unneeded material was removed cutting the sheet of metal. Only the material in the struts
remained. Then the sheet of metal has been folded again. The final result is shown in Figure
3.

Figure 3. Final 3D SolidWorks model of the stent

 Materials and Methods
• Material constants
The following material constants (316 L Stainless Steel Annealed) have been assigned:

Load_max 6x105 Pa Maximum applied load to the stent

E 1.93x1011 Pa Young's modulus

nu 0,3 Poasson's ratio

E_tan 6,92x109 Pa Isotropic tangent modulus (Zihui Xia)

S_ yield 2x108 Pa Yield stress (Zihui Xia, Savage at al., Murphy at al.).

E_tan and S_ yield constants have been used as entities and in the Elasto-Plastic
Material Settings page.
 Materials and Methods
• Load parameters and coordinate system
On the Load page, the Tangent and Normal Coordinate system () has been selected and in the
field - the normal load on the internal face of the stent, the following parametric equation has
been entered: -Load_max*((para<=1)*para+(para>1)*(2-para)), thus both a loading phase from
zero to Load_max and afterwards also an unloading phase from Load_max back to zero have
been assigned. Correspondingly the parameter values of para have been assigned of being
between 0 and 2.

• Mesh generation and convergence

The mesh generator has been assigned Coarser type, respectively the number of tetrahedral
mesh elements was 17846 and DoF was 104541. This type was chosen due to the complicated
geometry of the stent and low symmetry which require more computing resources.
The achieved convergence was 10-6.
The density of mesh is supposed to be at least of Normal type, in turn better resources than
our PC Intel QuadCore 64 bit with 4 GB RAM should be available for further research.
 Results and Conclusion
The selection of points for Dogboning, Distal radial recoil, Central radial recoil and
Foreshortening analysis is presented in figure 4 and figure 5.

Figure 4. Selection of the points for central radial Figure 5. Selection of the points for distal
recoil radial recoil, dogboning and foreshortening
 Applying a radially outward pressure on the inner surface of the stent in the loading
phase an expansion from the original diameter of 1.6 mm to approx. 3 mm has been observed
in figure 7 (central radial recoil). The initial deformation is linear and it is getting more
pronounced as the material is subjected to a load beyond the yield stress. The unloading is
quite linear according to the elasto-plastic model and it is observed slight recoil. Similar is the
loading - unloading behavior presented in figure 6 (distal radial recoil).

Figure 6. Distal radial recoil Figure 7. Central radial recoil

The loading - unloading behavior of distal points at
both ends of the stent reveals mutually opposite
deformation, which is due to the Foreshortening of
the stent (Figure 8). Figure 9 presents the distribution
of Von Mises stress. The color pattern shows quite
homogeneous distribution of Von Mises stress. The
values of Von Mises stress of being lower than 400
MPa are compared with the Ultimate Tensile Stress
(UTS) which is reported to be above 600 MPa
(Savage) and is identified as a failure strain (Savage,
Gosh). The load in the inner regions of the bends is
more expressed in comparison with the other
regions. Figure 8. Forshortening in the loading-unloading
phase
The results from the computer simulations are
summarized in
Table2. Results from computer simulations

Quantity Value
Dogboning 17%
Distal radial recoil 2.1%
Central radial recoil 5.9%
Foreshortening 1.3%
Von Mises stress (worse 400 MPa
case)
Figure 9. Von Mises stresses
Coverage 26%
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References:
• Numerical study on mechanical properties of stsnts with different materials
during stent deployment with balloon expansion, Pranab Ghosh, Krittika
DasGupta, Debabrata Nag, Abhijit Chanda, Excerpt from the proceedings of
the 2011 COMSOL conference in Bangalore
• A general finite element analysis method for balloon expandable stents
based on repeated unit cell (RUC) model, Zihui Xiaa, Feng Jua, Katsuhiko
Sasakib, Finite Elements in Analysis and Design, 43, Pages 649 –658
(2007)
• COMSOL Multiphysics version 3.5 - Documentation - Structural Mechanics,
Model Library, Biomedical stent
• Coronary stent strut size dependent stress-strain response investigated
using micromechanical finite element models, Savage P, O'Donnell BP,
McHugh PE, Murphy BP, Quinn DF, Ann Biomed Eng. 2004 Feb;32(2):202-
11.
• Mechanical Behaviour of Fully Expanded Commercially Available
Endovascular Coronary Stents, Tambaca, J., Canic, S., Kosor, M., Fish, R.
D., Paniagua, D., Tex. Heart Inst J 2011;38(5):491-511
• Effects of Material on the Deployment of Coronary Stents, Tammareddi, S.,
Quing, Li, Advanced Materials Research 2010; 123-125: 315-318