A nonlinear rotation-free shell formulation with prestressing for vascular biomechanics

We implement a nonlinear rotation-free shell formulation capable of handling large deformations for applications in vascular biomechanics. The formulation employs a previously reported shell element that calculates both the membrane and bending behavior via displacement degrees of freedom for a triangular element. The thickness stretch is statically condensed to enforce vessel wall incompressibility via a plane stress condition. Consequently, the formulation allows incorporation of appropriate 3D constitutive material models. We also incorporate external tissue support conditions to model the effect of surrounding tissue. We present theoretical and variational details of the formulation and verify our implementation against axisymmetric results and literature data. We also adapt a previously reported prestress methodology to identify the unloaded configuration corresponding to the medically imaged in vivo vessel geometry. We verify the prestress methodology in an idealized bifurcation model and demonstrate the significance of including prestress. Lastly, we demonstrate the robustness of our formulation via its application to mouse-specific models of arterial mechanics using an experimentally informed four-fiber constitutive model.