Biaxial mechanics of excised canine pulmonary arteries. Debes, Jack C., and Y. C. Fung. Department of Bioengineering and Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0412
APStracts 2:0066H, 1995.
A new method has been developed for measuring the stress-strain relationship in excised canine pulmonary arteries. Segments of dog main right pulmonary arteries were isolated by making two transverse cuts at each end of a segment near the bifurcations, yielding short cylinders which were then cut radially, relieving the residual stress, causing the cylindrical shells to spring open to approximately flat rectangular slabs with dimensions about 1.0 x 3.0 x 0.1 cm. The specimens were then tested using a biaxial tensile testing machine. The resulting data shows an approximately linear relationship between Kirchhoff stress and Lagrangian strain with very little hysteresis. The following pseudo strain energy function serves as a practical approximation for pulmonary arteries subjected to physiological levels of stress and strain:

Received 6 January 1994; accepted in final form 16 February 1995.
APS Manuscript Number H19-4.
Article publication pending Am. J. Physiol. (Heart Circ. Physiology).
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1995 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 10 March 1995.