Mechanical characterization of the softening behavior of human vaginal tissue

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2011

Authors

Pena, E (Author) Other; Martins, P (Author) Other; Mascarenhas, T (Author) FMUP; Natal Jorge, RMN (Author) FEUP; Ferreira, A (Author) FEUP; Doblare, M (Author) Other; Calvo, B (Author) Other

Journal

Title: Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials

Vol. 4

Pages: 275-283

ISSN: 1751-6161

Publisher: Elsevier

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 54 Citations

ISI Web of Science

Scopus - 56 Citations

Scientific classification

FOS: Engineering and technology > Environmental biotechnology

CORDIS: Technological sciences > Engineering > Biomedical enginnering

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-002-T2N

DOI: 10.1016/j.jmbbm.2010.10.006

Abstract (EN): The mechanical properties of vaginal tissue need to be characterized to perform accurate simulations of prolapse and other pelvic disorders that commonly affect women. This is also a fundamental step towards the improvement of therapeutic techniques such as surgery. In this paper, the softening behavior or Mullins effect of vaginal tissue is studied by proposing an appropriate constitutive model. This effect is an important factor after the birth, since vaginal tissue has been supporting a high load distribution and therefore does not recover its original behavior. Due to the anisotropy of the tissue, the mechanical testing of vaginal tissue, consists in loading-unloading uniaxial tension tests performed along the longitudinal and transverse axes of the vagina. A directional pseudo-elastic model was used to reproduce the inelastic behavior of the tissue. The obtained results may be helpful in the design of surgical procedures with autologous tissue or smart prostheses. A good qualitative agreement has been found between the numerical and experimental results for the vaginal tissue examples, indicating that the constitutive softening model can capture the typical stress-strain behavior observed in this kind of fibrous soft tissue.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 9