Biomechanical properties of 3D printable material usable for synthetic personalized healthy human aorta

Abstract

With the development of three-dimensional (3D) printing, 3D-printed products have been widely used in medical fields, such as plastic surgery, orthopedics, dentistry, etc. In cardiovascular research, 3D-printed models are becoming more realistic in shape. However, from a biomechanical point of view, only a few studies have explored printable materials that can represent the properties of the human aorta. This study focuses on 3D-printed materials that might simulate the stiffness of human aortic tissue. First, the biomechanical properties of a healthy human aorta were defined and used as reference. The main objective of this study was to identify 3D printable materials that possess similar properties to the human aorta. Three synthetic materials, NinjaFlex (Fenner Inc., Manheim, USA), FilasticTM (Filastic Inc., Jardim Paulistano, Brazil), and RGD450+TangoPlus (Stratasys Ltd.©, Rehovot, Israel), were printed in different thicknesses. Uniaxial and biaxial tensile tests were performed to compute several biomechanical properties, such as thickness, stress, strain, and stiffness. We found that with the mixed material RGD450+TangoPlus, it was possible to achieve a similar stiffness to healthy human aorta. Moreover, the 50-shore-hardness RGD450+TangoPlus had similar thickness and stiffness to the human aorta.