Copyright © 2011 A. Samuelson and P. Seshaiyer. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The enlargement and rupture of intracranial and abdominal aortic aneurysms constitutes a major medical problem. It has been suggested that enlargement and rupture are due to mechanical instabilities of the associated complex fluid-solid interaction in the lesions. In this paper, we examine a coupled fluid-structure mathematical model for a cylindrical geometry representing an idealized aneurysm using both analytical and numerical techniques. A stability analysis for this subclass of aneurysms is presented. It is shown that this subclass of aneurysms is dynamically stable both with and without a viscoelastic contribution to the arterial wall.