Modeling the mechanical response of in vivo human skin under a rich set of deformations

Cormac Flynn, Andrew Taberner, Poul Nielsen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

72 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Determining the mechanical properties of an individual's skin is important in the fields of pathology, biomedical device design, and plastic surgery. To address this need, we present a finite element model that simulates the skin of the anterior forearm and posterior upper arm under a rich set of three-dimensional deformations. We investigated the suitability of the Ogden and Tong and Fung strain energy functions along with a quasi-linear viscoelastic law. Using non-linear optimization techniques, we found material parameters and in vivo pre-stresses for different volunteers. The model simulated the experiments with errors-of-fit ranging from 13.7 to 21.5%. Pre-stresses ranging from 28 to 92 kPa were estimated. We show that using only in-plane experimental data in the parameter optimization results in a poor prediction of the out-of-plane response. The identifiability of the model parameters, which are evaluated using different determinability criteria, improves by increasing the number of deformation orientations in the experiments.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1935-1946
Number of pages12
JournalAnnals of Biomedical Engineering
Volume39
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2011
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Anisotropy
  • Constitutive modeling
  • Identifiability
  • In vivo skin
  • Parameter identification

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