Like all other materials, biological soft tissues are subject to general laws of physics, including those governing mechanical equilibrium and stability. In addition, however, these tissues are able to respond actively to changes in their mechanical and chemical environment. There is, therefore, a pressing need to understand such processes theoretically. In this paper, we present a new rate-based constrained mixture formulation suitable for studying mechanobiological equilibrium and stability of soft tissues exposed to transient or sustained changes in material composition or applied loading. These concepts are illustrated for canonical problems in arterial mechanics, which distinguish possible stable versus unstable mechanobiological responses. Such analyses promise to yield insight into biological processes that govern both health and disease progression.

像所有其他材料一样，生物软组织也要遵守一般的物理定律，包括那些控制机械平衡和稳定性的定律。然而，此外，这些组织能够对其机械和化学环境的变化做出积极反应。因此，迫切需要从理论上理解这种过程。在本文中，我们提出了一种新的基于速率的受限混合物配方，适用于研究暴露于材料成分或施加载荷的瞬时或持续变化的软组织的力学生物学平衡和稳定性。这些概念针对动脉力学中的典型问题进行了说明，该问题区分了可能的稳定的和不稳定的力学生物学响应。