Open Access

ARTICLE

Bhaskar Chandra Konala^∗, Ashish Das^∗, Rupak K Banerjee^∗,†
Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.8, No.1, pp. 1-20, 2011, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2011.008.001
Abstract Hemodynamic endpoints such as flow and pressure drop are often measured during angioplasty procedures to determine the functional severity of a coronary artery stenosis. There is a lack of knowledge regarding the influence of compliance of the arterial wall-stenosis on the pressure drop under hyperemic flows across coronary lesions. This study evaluates the influence in flow and pressure drop caused by variation in arterial-stenosis compliance for a wide range of stenosis severities. The flow and pressure drop were evaluated for three different severities of stenosis and tested for limiting scenarios of compliant models. The Mooney-Rivlin… More >

View

1688

Download

1188

Open Access

ARTICLE

Ashish Das^∗, William M. Gottliebson^†,‡, Madhura Karve^∗, Rupak Banerjee^∗,§,¶
Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.8, No.1, pp. 21-42, 2011, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2011.008.021
Abstract Right ventricular (RV) enlargement and pulmonary valve insufficiency (PI) are well-known, unavoidable long term sequelae encountered by patients who undergo tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) surgery. Despite their lifelong need for cardiac surveillance and occasional re-intervention, there is a paucity of numerical data characterizing blood flows in their pulmonary arteries (PA). Specifically, although PA regurgitation is well-known to be ubiquitously present in adult repaired TOF (rTOF) patients yet, there have been only limited numerical studies to fully characterize this process. The few studies available have utilized idealized, simplistic geometric models or overly simplistic boundary conditions that… More >

View

1628

Download

1220

Open Access

ARTICLE

Min Zhang^∗, Fa-Ming Chen^†, Yong-Jin Chen^∗,‡, Shun Wu^∗, Xin Lv^∗, Rui-Ni Zhao^∗
Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.8, No.1, pp. 43-60, 2011, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2011.008.043
Abstract To investigate the role of mechanical pressure on cartilage thickness and type II collagen synthesis, and the role of G protein in that process, in vitro organ culture of mandibular cartilage was adopted in this study. A hydraulic pressure-controlled cellular strain unit was used to apply hydrostatic pressurization to explant cultures. The explants were compressed by different pressure values (0 kPa, 100 kPa, and 300 kPa) after pretreatment with or without a selective and direct antagonist (NF023) for the G proteins. After 4, 8 and 12 h of cell culture under each pressure condition, histological… More >

View

1587

Download

1254

Open Access

ARTICLE

Hiroaki Yoshida, Mitsunori Tada^†, Masaaki Mochimaru^†
Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.8, No.1, pp. 61-72, 2011, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2011.008.061
Abstract Since the tactile perception detects skin deformation due to the contact of an object, it is important to understand contact mechanics, especially, frictional behavior of the human fingertip. The coefficient of friction is recently modeled as a function of the applied normal load in which case the traditional Coulomb's law does not provide a description for the skin surface. When a surface is a rubber-like material, the frictional behavior follows the frictional law of the rubber-like material. Therefore, we developed a three-dimensional Finite Element model of the fingertip and analyzed frictional behavior based on the… More >

View

1736

Download

1261

Open Access

ARTICLE

Biyue Liu^∗, Dalin Tang^†
Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.8, No.1, pp. 73-90, 2011, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2011.008.073
Abstract The objective of this work is to investigate the effect of non-Newtonian properties of blood on the wall shear stress (WSS) in atherosclerotic coronary arteries using both Newtonian and non-Newtonian models. Numerical simulations were performed to examine how the spatial and temporal WSS distributions are influenced by the stenosis size, blood viscosity, and flow rate. The computational results demonstrated that blood viscosity properties had considerable effect on the magnitude of the WSS, especially where disturbed flow was observed. The WSS distribution is highly non-uniform both temporally and spatially, especially in the stenotic region. The maximum More >

View

2193

Download

1390