Biomechanical Response of Human Liver and Spleen Parenchyma in Uniaxial Unconfined Compression

Abstract

Motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) commonly result in serious blunt abdominal injuries [1]. Although abdominal injuries account for only 3–5% of all injuries observed in MVCs, they comprise 8% of AIS 3+ injuries, 16.5% of AIS 4+ injuries and 20.5% of AIS 5+ injuries [24]. Currently, no crash test dummies used to assess injury risk in MVCs are equipped to represent individual solid abdominal organs located asymmetrically in the human abdomen. Consequently, researchers and safety engineers rely on finite element models (FEMs) to assess the risk of automotive related abdominal injuries. However, the response of these models must be locally and globally validated based on appropriate biomechanical data in order to accurately assess injury risk. There have only been a few studies which have investigated the compressive material properties of liver or spleen by performing compression tests on isolated samples [5–8]. Although these studies have provided considerable insight into the factors that affect the material response of the liver and spleen parenchyma, these studies have been limited to testing of animal tissue, sub-failure loading, or a single loading rate. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to quantify the compressive material properties of human liver and spleen parenchyma at various loading rates in order to characterize the viscoelastic and failure response.