Figure 3.

Schema of negative feedback characteristic of mechanical homeostasis in blood vessels and associated modeling via a constrained mixture model of N constituents. For illustrative purposes, constituent N=1 is assumed to not degrade during the G&R period of interest, as, for example elastic fibers under normal conditions in maturity. Importantly, the other constituents are deposited at a rate modulated by gain K^α > 0 and they degrade at rate k^α > 0, noting that deposition is at a homeostatic prestretch G^α >1 and particular orientation defined by angle α^α.