  Arterial tissue delamination, manifested as the failure between arterial
layers, is a critical process in the rupture of atherosclerotic plaque, leading
to potential life-threatening clinical consequences. Numerous models have been
used to characterize the arterial tissue delamination. Few has investigated the
effect of Cohesive Zone Model (CZM) shapes on predicting the delamination
behavior of the arterial wall. In this study, four types of cohesive zone
models (triangular, trapezoidal, linear-exponential and exponential-linear)
were investigated to compare their predictability of the arterial wall failure.
The Holzapfel-Gasser-Ogden (HGO) model was adopted for modelling the mechanical
behavior of the aortic bulk material. The simulation results using CZM on the
aortic media delamination were also compared with the results on mouse plaque
delamination and human fibrous cap delamination. The results show that: 1) the
simulation results based on the four shapes of CZMs match well with the
experimental results, 2) the triangular and exponential-linear CZMs are in good
agreement with the experimental force-displacement curves of mouse plaque
delamination, 3) considering the viscoelastic effect of the arterial tissue,
the triangular and exponential-linear CZMs match well with the experimental
force-displacement curves of human fibrous cap delamination. Thus, triangular
and exponential-linear CZMs can capture the arterial tissue failure response
well.
