A 3D Biomechanical Human Model for Numerical Simulation of Garment–Body Dynamic Mechanical Interactions During Wear

Abstract

This paper presents a 3-dimensional biomechanical model of human body that consists of three layers different mechanical properties, namely the skin, soft tissue and bone. Based on the theory of contact mechanics and analyzing the contact characteristics between the deformable human body and a garment, we simulate the dynamic mechanical interactions between the two by considering the garment as an elastic shell with large deformation. The contact between human body and garment is modeled as a dynamic sliding interface. A finite element method is used in the time domain for deriving a numerical solution of the dynamic contact problem. Using a numerical computing method, we can compute the 3D distribution of the pressure, stress and deformation in the garment and the human body, and visualize them in color contour plots. We implement the numerical computation of the model by using commercial finite element software on a Pentium III PC computer with an example of wearing tight-fitting trousers from foot to waist. The predicted pressure is close to the magnitude of the measurements from subjective evaluation experiments of garment pressure, indicating that the model is able to predict and simulate garment pressure during wear with reasonable accuracy. The numerical computational results show that the model can provide a comprehensive description of the mechanical interactions involved in the contact interface such as garment deformation, garment pressure, human body deformation and inner pressure of the skin due to its deformation.