The effect of oxidation on the mechanical response of isolated elastin and aorta.

Oxidation of aorta by hydroxyl radicals produces structural changes in arterial proteins like elastin and collagen, which results in change in the mechanical response of aorta. In this paper, with a view to understand the effect of oxidation on the mechanical behavior of aorta and isolated elastin, a thermodynamically consistent constitutive model is developed within the framework of mixture theory to describe the changes in aorta and isolated elastin with oxidation. The model is then studied under uniaxial extension using experimental data from literature.