Stress analysis of skin wounds using advanced discretization techniques

Human skin is the largest human organ and it is an important physical barrier that allows body homeostasis. During wound healing, this mechanically flexible organ is capable to repair itself. Nevertheless, the wound represents an abrupt change in the skin continuum, leading to stress concentrations in the surrounding wound area. Advanced discretization techniques, namely finite element method (FEM) and radial point interpolation method (RPIM), are suitable computational tools to simulate biomechanical problems allowing to analyse the displacement field and the corresponding stress and strain fields. This study aimed to construct a 2D model of skin wounds with different depths and to analyse the stress and strain fields obtained, using FEM and RPIM analysis. The simulations results demonstrated that the highest levels of stress were observed in the end of the wound, in both techniques used. Regarding the strain fields, hypodermis presented the highest values. Although this is a preliminary study to assess the performance of these numerical methods in the analysis of stress profile distribution in the human skin, it was possible to conclude that both finite element method and radial point interpolation method are valid numerical tools. Moreover, the materials used in the simulations were well characterized in terms of elasticity. In future work, it is intended to refine the model parameters and to include the hyperelastic and the anisotropic behaviour of the human skin