Orthostatic Hypotension (OH) is a prevalent condition affecting 52.1% of stroke patients, characterized by a drop in atrial blood pressure upon standing. This is due to the pooling of blood in the abdomen and leg, and OH results in debilitating symptoms of nausea, lightheadedness, and dizziness. Current management techniques are limited and not very effective, so I propose an active, compression abdominal band that contracts when needed. This device should have a minimal design, so nylon-6,6 actuators, powerful artificial muscles created from fishing line and conductive thread, were chosen as the compressive element. Given that previous research focused on strength and force-excursion characteristics of these actuators, this study focuses on determining their viability for this application by conducting stress-relaxation and creep tests on single actuators (sample sizes of 10) and on a forty actuator band. Stress-relaxation results indicate that actuators will be able to maintain tension levels required effective compression 18 times as long as necessary. Creep testing is inconclusive due to oscillations found in the data as a result of low processing power of the Instron machine used to conduct tests. Despite the fact that more tests need to be conducted to resolve various limitations of this study,I conclude that I can move forward to create a prototype of the abdominal band.Biomedical Engineerin
