Numerical Simulation of Anisotropy Directions in Soft Tissues and in Particular in Skin

Abstract

Orientation of collagen fibers and their spatial distribution predefine macroscopic mechanical properties of the soft tissue and in particular its anisotropy directions. In this contribution, we apply two different procedures to automatically generate these directions for a 3D FE‐model. The first procedure is based on an analogy with a heat conduction problem. Accordingly, a thermal flux under certain temperature boundary conditions is calculated by the same FE model and is further utilized for the definition of the anisotropy directions. The numerical result shows good agreement with Langer's lines data in human skin. Within the second procedure, the fiber vector field is calculated by the Laplacian smoothing method based on the user defined fiber direction sketches. (© 2013 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)