Study on Mechanical Properties of Curved Vascular Stent after Crimping

It is a great challenge to improve the mechanical properties of vascular stent, especially in curved vessels. Vascular stent should have ideal mechanical properties, such as high elasticity, high strength and biocompatibility. At present, most of the literatures focus on the mechanical properties of the stent after expansion, ignoring that of the stent before the stent is implanted into the human body. After the stent is crimped, it has a great impact on the stress fatigue of the stent. Excessive compression will lead to the weakening strength, which cannot support the blood vessel. Therefore, in this paper, an improved algorithm was proposed to crimp and straighten a curved stent to a smaller diameter to generate the required boundary conditions by finite element analysis (FEA). This method is helpful to study the mechanical properties of the stent after being crimped and treat lesions in highly curved locations.