Numerical Study of Stress Estimation Methods for Membrane Inflation Experiments

Statically determinate structure is the one that for given geometries and boundary conditions will give nearly the same stress field for different material parameters. This fact is often exploited to assess in vivo blood vessel wall stress or inflated membrane stress during bulge tests. In this work we numerically evaluate the accuracy of stress estimates based on statically determinate structure approach in the case of the membrane inflation test. For isotropic materials we obtain good accuracy (0.5–3 \(\%\) ), in contrast to anisotropic materials (5–20 \(\%\) ). We also study the sensitivity of the approach to inaccuracy of geometric data and provide suggestions for choosing stiffness in wall stress estimation procedure.