Puncture resistance and tensile strength of skin simulants

Abstract

This study aims ultimately to quantify the force needed to penetrate human tissue. The results will reduce the subjectivity of expert opinion in stabbing incidents. They will also aid clinicians in assessing the severity of injury and help prevent the unnecessary deaths which can occur when this is not fully appreciated. Tensile tests were performed to identify suitable skin simulants with synthetic chamois and pigskin as candidate materials. Quasi-static penetration experiments were also performed in which a knife blade penetrated a skin simulant target. Pigskin was found to be much stronger than chamois under tensile load yet the puncture resistance was almost identical for the two materials.

A combined experimental and numerical study of stab-penetration forces

“…[11]. Comparing our own results to those from the literature in Table 3 we see that the present experimental results are similar to those of [3] and [4], who used instrumented blades, and to those of [7] and [8] who used testing machines at quasi-static speeds. Our results appear to differ significantly only from the work of [6], whose forces appear to be substantially greater than all other authors.…”

“…Typically these studies use customized instrumented knives, where the stab-penetration test is performed by a volunteer holding the blade [3,4,5,6]. An alternative technique, which is used here, is to attach an instrumented blade to a machine which drives the stabbing motion [7,8], offering greater control over a range of test variables. In this study, the data obtained through experimentation has been used to develop a finite element model of stab penetration.…”

“…Finite element analysis (FEA), originally developed in the 1940s as a tool for civil and aeronautical engineering, has become an invaluable tool in biomechanics over the last three decades [9]. With the exception of [7], who carried out a preliminary study to investigate the suitability of FEA to simulate stab penetration tests, to the best of the author's knowledge, FEA has not yet been used as a tool in the investigation of stab mechanics. The model developed here, is therefore the first fully developed FEA model which simulates the penetration of a blade into human skin.…”

The evaluation of new multi-material human soft tissue simulants for sports impact surrogates

“…Liu & Yeung (2008) observed a greater stress relaxation in specimens cut perpendicular to the fibre direction and a greater viscoelasticity at higher strains. Similarly Ankersen et al (1999) and Lim et al (2011) observed a clear distinction in material stiffness in tensile tests between the two orthogonal directions. The age of the mammalian surrogate is also a pertinent consideration; the collagen content of skin decreases with age and young skin is typically less protective against large strain trauma than older skin which has a proportionally greater elastic region.…”

“…Due to its thickness skin is commonly tested in tension (Wu et al, 2003) and under quasistatic loading conditions (e.g. Ankersen et al, 1999;Ní Annaidh et al, 2012), though quasistatic responses may not be simply extrapolated to high strain rates without experimental validation. Lim et al (2011) andGallagher et al (2012) conducted dynamic tensile testing on porcine and human skin tissues respectively using a modified Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB).…”