Important Equations:

o
o
Thermal-Electric Fracture Detection in Nitinol Stents
During Fatigue Testing Cycles
Austen Scudder, Mir Shams, Andrew Hastert, Dr. Ilya Avdeev (Advisor)
Motivation
Peripheral artery stents experience high
failure rates, often leading to potentially
fatal restenosis. A method to determine
the specific failure time and location in a
stent during a fatigue testing cycle would
yield better stent designs and could
eventually allow finite element
simulations to replace physical testing
methods altogether.
Thermal-Electric Theory
Figure 1: Peripheral stents located in the
common carotid artery undergo extreme
loading conditions. Fatigue tests
simulate various modes of stress,
including compression, torsion and
bending.
Nitinol is an electrically conductive material. Therefore, the
stent can be modeled as parallel resistance elements in a
series. Moreover, the stent itself is has an effective
resistance as a result of the smaller struts. Any fracture of a
strut or connector affects the resistive structure, thus
altering the overall resistance. Any deviation from the initial
resistance can be observed by incorporating the stent into a
Wheatstone bridge circuit and measuring the voltage
output.
Figure 2: A Wheatstone bridge
circuit is a common technique in
detection of small resistive
changes.
ANSYS Simulation Experimental
References
Future Work
Figure 9: The
image to the left
displays the
unfractured stent
with a current
density relative to
its maximum. The
image to the right
shows a stent
with a fracture
through the main
connector
(located between
the two markers).
The cold zone is
shown in blue
shows that little to
no current flows
through the
localized area
which contains
the fracture.
Figure 6: ANSYS Multiphysics simulation of a thermal-electric model is a computationally
intensive process. Achieving a steady state temperature requires non-linear calculations
and must be performed iteratively.
[1] M.Z. Shams, Andrew L. Hastert and I.V. Avdeev
Motion Tracking and Mechanical Analysis of
Peripheral Vascular Stents, to appear in the
proceedings of IASTED International Conference on
Biomedical Engineering (BioMed 2011), February 16-
18, 2011, Innsbruck, Austria.
[2] I.V. Avdeev and M.Z. Shams Modeling Vascular
Stents: Coupling Solid with Reduced Order FE
Models, Proceedings of WCCM/APCOM 2010, July
19-23, 2010, Sydney, Australia.
ANSYS Results
Equation 1: This equation is for a Wheatstone bridge circuit. If all
resistances are properly balanced the output voltage will be zero. A
deviation of resistance in any element will cause an imbalance and a
voltage will be detected.
Figure 3: The stent is composed of a series of rings, each
having an effective resistance due to the struts which compose
it. Any strut disassociation will interrupt the current flow and
result in a different effective resistance for the stent.
Equation 2: This equation shows a unitless factor of change for a
stent with a single fracture, where: n = numbers of rings, m = number of
struts per ring, and r = resistance of each strut.
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
+ V -
i
Resistive elements have a
thermal response due to
current flow. If current is
applied to a fractured stent,
the fracture location can be
identified by using a high
resolution thermal imaging
device and tracing the thermal
gradient to the cold zone.
Boundary conditions:
oCurrent at proximal nodes, i = 15mA
oVoltage at distal nodes, V
out
= 0 Volts
oAmbient air temperature, T
inf
= 20C
o Improve analytical model of
lumped stent resistance
o Resolve discrepancies
between experimental and
simulation results
o Conduct thermal
measurements experimentally
o Design DAQ program for real-
time implementation
Figure 8: In an unfractured stent, the gradient
above would be evenly stepped at consistent
intervals. The above stent is fractured at the
connector and displays an inconsistent transition of
electric potential from the proximal to distal end. The
pattern will be constant regardless of input, however
the scale changes proportionally to the applied
current.
o Resistance of an unfractured
15-ring stent was measured in
order to evaluate quantitative
accuracy of computer
simulations, R=2.10.1 .
o Thermal measurements have
not yet been obtained.
Figure 7: Resistance was measured across 15 rings of a Protg
EverFlex nitinol stent using a Cen-Tech 37772 multi-meter. Two plunger
leads were used as the positive and negative affixments. Plunger leads
were positioned counter-radially.
Figure 5: (Left) Boundary
conditions must be applied
evenly and consistently
between simulations to
ensure accurate interpretation
of results. Nodes were
selected at the distal and
proximal ends of the stent.
Using the given model,
resistance had to be indirectly
calculated by determining the
maximum electric potential.
Figure 10: (Left)
Temperature profile of an
unfractured stent. No
change in temperatures
exceeding 0.06C (T).
Figure 11: (Right)
Temperature profile of a
fractured stent. Hot spots
occurring to the left and
right of the fracture
where current
concentrations occur.
Changes in temperature
approach 0.12C (T).
Temperature can be
scaled to more
observable levels by
increasing current load.
Figure 4: A nitinol stent
can be modeled as a
resistor to determine
when a fracture occurs.