ASSESSMENT OF MECHANICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VASCULAR ENDO-PROSTHESES

Titanium nickelide (nitinol) is one of prospective materials for production of special endo-prostheses and other parts and characterized with effect of shape memory. A specific feature of vascular endo-prostheses is the necessity to provide the required rigidity within the temperature interval from 15 to 42 оС. It has been established that titanium nickelide is able to provide the required rigidity but it depends on preliminary heat treatment parameters. So, it is important to determine rela-tions between rigidity of titanium nickelide wire and its preliminary heat treatment parameters for the given temperature in-terval. The aim of the work is to create devices that allow to estimate radial and flexural rigidity of elements made of flexible nitinol wire for manufacturing various medical products, including endo-prostheses of vessels – stents and stent grafts, filter traps. Laboratory digital scales and a specially developed dynamometer based on a cylindrical slotted spring and inductive displacement transducer have been used for measuring a load. The paper proposes possible variants of device designs used to monitor radial rigidity of blood vessel endo-prostheses, as well as to control flexural rigidity of endo-prosthesis elements and wire for their manufacture. The developed devices allow us to evaluate mechanical characteristics of samples under the desired temperature conditions. An introduction of the developed devices has permitted to carry out an operative control on radial and flexural stiffness of intravascular endo-prostheses elements both under conditions of research investigations and during technological process of their manufacture. Currently, the devices are used to specify heat treatment regimes for nitin-ol wire from various manufacturers while manufacturing vascular endo-prostheses. 

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