Pa. Altman et al., ROTARY BENDING FATIGUE OF COILS AND WIRES USED IN CARDIAC LEAD DESIGN, Journal of biomedical materials research, 43(1), 1998, pp. 21-37
Implantable electrical conductor wires and coils of MP35N and drawn MP
35N tube filled with a silver core (DFT) were tested in rotary bending
to evaluate fatigue characteristics and failure mechanisms, Detailed
stress analysis enabled evaluation of helical coil fatigue in bending
with respect to theoretical stress, The relations between the maximum
cyclic stress (S) and the cycles to failure (N) were obtained by intro
ducing cyclic stresses on over 600 samples, Microscopic evaluation usi
ng scanning electron microscopy was performed to identify failure mech
anisms, The results show that the stress analysis presented is a viabl
e means for assessing the stress state in a composite coil structure i
n rotary loop testing, comparable S-N fatigue data sets for MP35N and
DFT conductors are not consistently significantly different, S-N relat
ionships for coils and wires of the MP35N and DFT appear to lie on the
same curves, and failures of all sample types initiate on the outside
surface of the wire, Differences in crack propagation and final fract
ure are shown as a function of sample type and cyclic stress, (C) 1998
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.