On the evolution of stresses in a stratified atherosclerotic arterial tissue

Cardiovascular diseases are, according to the World Health Organization, the leading cause of deaths worldwide. A common cardiovascular disease is the coronary artery disease which results in the development of a plaque inside the coronary artery. This process, called atherosclerosis, reduces the gross cross section area of the lumen and creates an enhanced stress distribution in the arterial tissue which can further lead to rupture of the plaque initiating a myocardium infarction and manifesting a sharp angina in the patient. This work aims to analyse the evolution of the response of a sclerotic coronary artery as compared to a healthy artery. A three layered arterial tissue has been modeled in commercial finite element software. The layers were adhered by implementing contact modeling. Next a plaque was introduced in the model that would result in the reduction of the cross section of the lumen by 50 percentage. The plaque was modeled using hydrostatic fluid elements and was assumed to be incompressible. An axisymmetric finite element analysis was carried out for the tissues under a radial pressure. The results portray the evolution of the Von Mises stress, shear stresses as well as contact stresses on the interface between layers for a diseased coronary artery as compared to a healthy one.