Influence of Elevated Temperature During Crimping on Results of Numerical Simulation of a Bioresorbable Stent Deployment Process

Bioresorbable stents (BRSs) represent a promising technological development within the field of cardiovascular angioplasty because of their ability to avoid long-term side effects of conventional stents such as in-stent restenosis, late stent thrombosis and fatigue induced strut fracture. However polymer materials used for production of some of the BRSs pose new challenges raising from the fact, that mechanical properties of polymers are very different from the metallic materials used to make stents before BRSs era. These challenges manifests not only in clinical practice but mainly in the process of design of the new device. This especially applies to Finite Element based numerical simulations of the stent structure, as the first-choice tool to examine newly developed stent in early stage of design process. In the article authors investigating different scenarios of numerical simulation of stent deployment process. The goal of the exercise is to find a proper way to model influence of elevated temperature present during crimping on the behaviour of the stent.