Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the western world. To reduce pain and hospitalization for the patient, modern medicine is moving towards minimally invasive surgery such as catheter-based interventions. During these interventions high stresses and even damage may occur in the arterial tissue. Numerical models of the tissue, informed by experimental data on the mechanical response at supra-physiological loads, can improve the design of surgical devices and surgical procedures. Consequently, this work comprises three major topics, namely, mathematical modeling, experiments and computational simulation.