Characterization of the mechanical properties of skin by inverse analysis combined with the indentation test

Abstract 

This study proposes a new method to determine the mechanical properties of human skin by the use of the indentation test [Pailler-Mattei, 2004. Caractérisation mécanique et tribologique de la peau humaine in vivo, Ph.D. Thesis, ECL-no. 2004-31; Pailler-Mattei, Zahouani, 2004. Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology 18, 1739–1758]. The principle of the measurements consists in applying an in vivo compressive stress [Zhang et al., 1994. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 208, 217–222; Bosboom et al., 2001. Journal of Biomechanics 34, 1365–1368; Oomens et al., 1984. Selected Proceedings of Meetings of European Society of Biomechanics, pp. 227–232; Oomens et al., 1987. Journal of Biomechanics 20(9), 877–885] on the skin tissue of an individual's forearm. These measurements show an increase in the normal contact force as a function of the indentation depth. The interpretation of such results usually requires a long and tedious phenomenological study. We propose a new method to determine the mechanical parameters which control the response of skin tissue. This method is threefold: experimental, numerical, and comparative. It consists combining experimental results with a numerical finite elements model in order to find out the required parameters. This process uses a scheme of extended Kalman filters (EKF) [Gu et al., 2003. Materials Science and Engineering A345, 223–233; Nakamura et al., 2000. Acta Mater 48, 4293–4306; Leustean and Rosu, 2003. Certifying Kalman filters. RIACS Technical Report 03.02, 27pp. http://gureni.cs.uiuc.edu/~grosu/download/luta+leo.pdf; Welch and Bishop, An introduction to Kalman filter, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 16p. http://www.cs.unc.edu/~welch/kalman/]. The first results presented in this study correspond to a simplified numerical modeling of the global system. The skin is assumed to be a semi-infinite layer with an isotropic linear elastic mechanical behavior [Zhang et al., 1994. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 208, 217–222] This analysis will be extended to more realistic models in further works.

Keywords: Indentation, Inverse methods, Finite elements, Mechanical properties, Kalman filtering, Human skin