Dynamic stresses and strains in the left ventricular wall based on large deformation theory

In this paper, elastodynamic large deformation theory is applied to calculate dynamic stresses and strains in the left ventricular wall. Researchers usually neglect inertial forces and consider the wall to be thin. In this work, we do not make these simplifying assumptions, although we consider the ventricle to be spherical. We examine the influence the inertial term has on stresses, strains, stretch ratios, wall thickness and myocardial stiffness, which we have computed using available data for the heart of a dog. During one complete cardiac cycle, wall thickness, stretch ratios and stress at the inner wall are, of course, constant when using a static analysis and vary in time when using a dynamic analysis. The effect of the inertia term on the difference between static and dynamic circumferential stress is a maximum (1%) at the endocardium (inner wall) and zero at the epicardium (outer wall).