A Universal Dynamic Inflation Test for Soft Tissue, Tissue Analogues and Grafts

This paper presents a new dynamic inflation experiment method for identifying the viscoelastic parameters of blood vessels and grafts. The material parameters are estimated only from the recorded damped natural pressure oscillation and from the initial geometry of the tested specimens. The identified parameters are dynamic compliance, the damping ratio, fictitious fluid viscosity, frequency, and, for tubular samples, the elastic incremental modulus and the wall viscosity. Several experiments with latex tubular samples were performed to check the suitability of this unique experimental method, and to estimate the limits of its applicability (effects of operational parameters, e.g. the geometry of the samples and the viscosity of the working fluids).