Experimental testing and constitutive modeling of the mechanical properties of the swine skin tissue

The aim of the study was an estimation of the possibility of using hyperelastic material models to fit experimental data obtained in the tensile test for the swine skin tissue. Methods: The uniaxial tensile tests of samples taken from the abdomen and back of a pig was carried out. The mechanical properties of the skin such as the mean Young’s modulus, the mean maximum stress and the mean maximum elongation were calculated. The experimental data have been used to identify the parameters in specific strain-energy functions given in seven constitutive models of hyperelastic materials: neo-Hookean, Mooney–Rivlin, Ogden, Yeoh, Martins, Humphrey and Veronda–Westmann. An analysis of errors in fitting of theoretical and experimental data was done. Results: Comparison of load –displacement curves for the back and abdomen regions of skin taken showed a different scope of both the mean maximum loading forces and the mean maximum elongation. Samples which have been prepared from the abdominal area had lower values of the mean maximum load compared to samples from the spine area. The reverse trend was observed during the analysis of the values of elongation. An analysis of the accuracy of model fitting to the experimental data showed that, the least accurate were the model of neo- -Hookean, model of Mooney–Rivlin for the abdominal region and model of Veronda–Westmann for the spine region. Conclusions: An analysis of seven hyperelastic material models showed good correlations between the experimental and the theoretical data for five models.