Figure 1.

The aorta (a) is composed of three layers: the intima (yellow region), media (red region), and adventitia (orange region). The media is composed of multiple layers of elastin separated by interlaminar space. The lamellar unit of the aortic media (b) was used to create a representative volume element for the finite element simulation (c). The RVE dimensions were taken as 250 × 250 × 6.25 µm. The green region represents an elastic lamella while the red region represents the interlaminar space. For the simulation, the constituents of the IL space: cells, glycosaminoglycans, etc. have been homogenized to an isotropic material. Only half of the lamellar unit (shown by black rectangle in (b)) has been modeled considering its symmetry. To highlight the mesh discretization, a 75 × 75 × 6.25 µm section of the mesh is shown. The elastic lamella is represented in the model by a network of elastin fibers. This network (d) is composed of 21,000 fiber segments. A representative (10 × 10 × 0.75 µm) portion of the elastic lamella has been plotted to show the dense 3D nature of the network. The collagen network (e) (shown in (c) by the dotted yellow line) is situated directly below the elastin network and is composed of 860 fiber segments.