Morphoelastic fiber remodeling in pressurized thick-walled cylinders with application to soft tissue collagenous tubes

We consider the mechanics of fiber remodeling in a pressurized thick walled cylinder where our focus is on the interaction between inflation and remodeling. The material is taken to consist of an incompressible neo-Hookean ground substance matrix in which the fibers are embedded. The fiber network is assumed to undergo a stretch mediated remodeling process, as suggested by experiments on enzymatic degradation of collagen fibers in biological soft tissues. In our treatment, such a remodeling process is defined in terms of a constant fiber-creation rate, and a fiber-dissolution rate that decreases with the amount of fiber stretch. Here we study how pressure loading of a tube affects this process within the cylindrical wall. The impact of two basic load carrying fibers models on the remodeling of the fiber network are explored, as well as the effect of two different choices for the fiber's natural configuration when replacement fibers are first synthesized.