DYNAMIC STRESSES AND STRAINS IN THE LEFT-VENTRICULAR WALL BASED ON LARGE-DEFORMATION THEORY

In this paper, elastodynamic large deformation theory is applied to ca lculate dynamic stresses and strains in the left ventricular wall. Res earchers usually neglect inertial forces and consider the wall to be t hin. In this work, we do not make these simplifying assumptions, altho ugh we consider the ventricle to be spherical. We examine the influenc e the inertial term has on stresses, strains, stretch ratios, wall thi ckness and myocardial stiffness, which we have computed using availabl e data for the heart of a dog. During one complete cardiac cycle, wall thickness, stretch ratios and stress at the inner wall are, of course , constant when using a static analysis and vary in time when using a dynamic analysis. The effect of the inertia term on the difference bet ween static and dynamic circumferential stress is a maximum (1%) at th e endocardium (inner wall) and zero at the epicardium (outer wall). (C ) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.