Uniaxial Tensile Testing of the Native Porcine Pericardium

This proceedings paper characterized the uniaxial tensile response of native porcine pericardium as a candidate biomaterial for bioprosthetic aortic valve development. Pericardium from six fifty-one-week-old Landrace pig hearts was dissected into strips and tested in circumferential and radial orientations under hydrated, physiological-temperature conditions. The study compared rupture behaviour, deformation at rupture, and Young’s modulus between orientations, then fit the experimental stress-strain data using five isotropic hyperelastic constitutive models: Klosner-Segal, Ogden, Yeoh, Arruda-Boyce, and Van der Waals. The radial direction was more compliant and reached a higher average rupture strain of about 56%, while the circumferential direction was stiffer, reaching only about 26% average strain within the BioTester’s 23 N force limit. Maximum stress was higher in the circumferential direction, approximately 11.67 MPa, than in the radial direction, approximately 8.57 MPa. Young’s modulus was also significantly higher circumferentially, approximately 61.19 MPa versus 33.10 MPa radially. The authors concluded that native porcine pericardium is anisotropic and hyperelastic, and that the Klosner-Segal and Yeoh models best captured the uniaxial response for future finite element simulations of prosthetic valve materials.