RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The biaxial mechanics of thermally denaturing skin - Part II: Modeling
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.06.04.447120
DO 10.1101/2021.06.04.447120
A1 Manuel Rausch
A1 William D. Meador
A1 John Toaquiza Tubon
A1 Omar Moreno-Flores
A1 Adrian Buganza Tepole
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/06/06/2021.06.04.447120.abstract
AB Understanding the response of skin to superphysiological temperatures is critical to the diagnosis and prognosis of thermal injuries, and to the development of temperature-based medical therapeutics. Unfortunately, this understanding has been hindered by our incomplete knowledge about the nonlinear coupling between skin temperature and its mechanics. In Part I of this study we experimentally demonstrated a complex interdependence of time, temperature, direction, and load in skin’s response to superphysiological temperatures. In Part II of our study, we test two different models of skin’s thermo-mechanics to explain our observations. In both models we assume that skin’s response to superphysiological temperatures is governed by the denaturation of its highly collageneous microstructure. Thus, we capture skin’s native mechanics via a microstructurally-motivated strain energy function which includes probability distributions for collagen fiber orientation and waviness. In the first model, we capture skin’s response to superphysiological temperatures as a transition between two states that link the kinetics of collagen fiber denaturation to fiber coiling and to the transformation of each fiber’s constitutive behavior from purely elastic to viscoelastic. In the second model, we capture skin’s response to super-physiological temperatures instead via three states in which a sequence of two reactions link the kinetics of collagen fiber denaturation to fiber coiling, followed by a state of fiber damage. Given the success of both models in qualitatively capturing our observations, we expect that our work will provide guidance for future experiments that could probe each model’s assumptions toward a better understanding of skin’s coupled thermo-mechanics and that our work will be used to guide the engineering design of heat treatment therapies.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.