Experimental characterisation on the behaviour of PLLA for stretch blowing moulding of bioresorbable vascular scaffolds

Huidong Wei, Gary Menary*, Fraser Buchanan, Shiyong Yan, James Nixon

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Processing tubes from poly (l-lactic acid) (PLLA) by stretch blow moulding (SBM) is used in the manufacture of bioresorbable vascular scaffolds (BVS) to improve their mechanical performance. To better understand this processing technique, a novel experimental setup by free stretch blow inside a water bath was developed to visualise the tube forming process and analyse the deformation behaviour. PLLA tubes were heated, stretched and blown with no mould present inside a temperature-controlled water bath whilst recording the processing parameters (axial force, inflation pressure). The onset of pressure activation relative to the axial stretch was controlled deliberately to produce a simultaneous (SIM) or sequential (SEQ) mode of deformation. Real-time images of the tube during forming were captured using high speed cameras and the surface strain of the patterned tube was extracted using digital image correlation (DIC). The deformation characteristics of PLLA tubes in SBM was quantified by analysis of shape evolution, strain history and stress-strain relationship.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)375-389
Number of pages15
JournalInternational Journal of Material Forming
Volume14
Issue number3
Early online date17 Jan 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 May 2021

Bibliographical note

Copyright The Author(s) 2020. Open Access - This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were
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Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 691238 involving Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Italy), University of Warwick (UK), Queen’s University Belfast (UK) and California Institute of Technology (US). The PhD scholarship was funded by Queen’s University Belfast and China Scholarship Council.

Keywords

  • DIC
  • Experimental characterisation
  • Free stretch blow
  • PLLA
  • Water bath

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