Residual stresses and fiber orientations in arterial walls can be approximated by means of the simulation of growth and remodeling processes. In order to enable a comparison of different approaches of combined growth and remodeling in one framework, a method based on the optimization of model parameters is developed. The minimization of a mechano-biologically motivated objective function permits to evaluate the approaches with respect to their ability of effectively reducing stress peaks and stress inhomogeneities in the arterial wall. This examination is performed for a simplified, one-layered, rotationally symmetric arterial segment in order to enable the analysis of the fundamental mechanisms included in the individual model variants. Once the most probable growth mechanism is identified, multi-layered segments can be analyzed in more detail
