Compressive properties of passive skeletal muscle—The impact of precise sample geometry on parameter identification in inverse finite element analysis

Abstract

Due to the increasing developments in modelling of biological material, adequate parameter identification techniques are urgently needed. The majority of recent contributions on passive muscle tissue identify material parameters solely by comparing characteristic, compressive stress–stretch curves from experiments and simulation. In doing so, different assumptions concerning e.g. the sample geometry or the degree of friction between the sample and the platens are required. In most cases these assumptions are grossly simplified leading to incorrect material parameters. In order to overcome such oversimplifications, in this paper a more reliable parameter identification technique is presented: we use the inverse finite element method (iFEM) to identify the optimal parameter set by comparison of the compressive stress–stretch response including the realistic geometries of the samples and the presence of friction at the compressed sample faces. Moreover, we judge the quality of the parameter identification by comparing the simulated and experimental deformed shapes of the samples. Besides this, the study includes a comprehensive set of compressive stress–stretch data on rabbit soleus muscle and the determination of static friction coefficients between muscle and PTFE.