Nowadays, stent implantation is the most used procedure to treat restenosis of
coronary arteries. To prevent restenosis, a stent must absorb a large amount of plastic
strain energy during its expansion to avoid the re-closure of artery wall after the
implantatioon. According to this design criterion, it was applied the topological
optimization technique to provide the best layout of a u nit o r c ell t o b e u sed i n t he
formation of the tubular structure of a stent. Subsequently, the topologically optimized
stent cell was employed to create the three dimensional stent structure using the software
Autocad/Mechanical Desktop® for the generation and treatment of this model. To test this
model it was applied the software Stampack® of explicit finite elements to simulate and
analyse the expansion process of optimized stent during the angioplasty by hydroforming.
Although the hydroforming has been extensively employed in forming process of tubes
used in the automotive industry, it was used in this work to study mechanical behavior of
stents during the angioplasty. From the simulation by finite elements, it was possible to
predict some design parameters of this novel optimized stent model, such as, the pressure
of expansion to be applied in the balloon and the plastic strain field of the stent structure
after the implant.
