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A Constitutive Model for Softening Behaviors of Skin Tissue

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Abstract

Skin tissue is a kind of complex biological material abundant with fibers. A new constitutive model, relating macroscopic responses with microstructural fiber configuration alteration, is developed to investigate the stress softening behaviors of skin tissue observed during cyclic loading–unloading tests. Two influential factors are introduced to describe the impact of fiber configuration change and stretch-induced damage. The present model achieves good agreement between predicted stress distribution of human skin and corresponding ex vivo experimental data obtained from the literature, affirming its capability to effectively capture the characteristic softening behaviors of human skin under cyclic loading conditions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (T2293720/T2293722) and the program of Innovation Team in Universities and Colleges in Guangdong (2021KCXTD006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematics and Statistics, Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Zhonghui Yuan

  2. School of Science, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Zheng Zhong

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  1. Zhonghui Yuan
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  2. Zheng Zhong
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Correspondence to Zheng Zhong.

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Yuan, Z., Zhong, Z. A Constitutive Model for Softening Behaviors of Skin Tissue. Acta Mech. Solida Sin. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10338-024-00474-8

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