Analysis of impact of mechanical properties of components of pathological arterial wall on its state of stress

The thesis deals with measurements of the atherosclerothic carotid plaques mechanical properties with wiew towards the improvements of their constitutive models and then towards the impact of application of those constitutive models in fibrous cap. The introductory part provides a brief summary of medical knowledge needed to understand atheroma formation and the risks involved. Next, there's a survey of plaque mechanical testing methods and the obtained results on tissue properties. The previously used constitutive models of atherosclerothic tissues are listed as well. Main body of the thesis describes the preparation of testing samples from obtained atheroma, methodology and course of experiments execution and subsequent processing of the experimental data to evaluate the behavior of the atheromatous tissue individual parts. Then the discussion and evaluation of our results and findings is given. Along with the evaluated mechanical properties, experimental data fitted to models are presented with respect to their predictive abilities. The final part is dedvoted to the finite element analysis of an idealized 2D model with emphasis on the effect of necrotic core and fibrous tissue properties on von Mises equivalent stress in the fibrous cap