Modeling the Anisotropic Properties of Human Skin Tissues

The anisotropic properties of human skin tissues are important for many applications, such as medical device/patient interface modeling. Typically, uniaxial [1] and biaxial [2] tests are used for mechanical testing of skin. The inflation method, less commonly used for skin, presents the advantages of imposing a biaxial deformation state more similar to that found in vivo. For methods that incorporate full-field displacement measurements, the material directions can be determined from the test rather than pre-selected prior to testing [3]. Furthermore, the mechanical response measured by the inflation method has been shown to be insensitive to preconditioning [4].