Dynamic behavior of multilayered skin structure: A preliminary numerical and analytical microscopic analysis

Abstract

High-velocity micro-particle impact on multilayered skin structure is of interest in the framework of transdermal drug delivery system. The understanding of the physical impact process in this phenomenon is complex and lack of experimental investigations in the literature. This work aims to investigate the impact responses of multilayered skin structure impacted by high-velocity micro-scale particle utilizing numerical and analytical analysis. Numerical and analytical analysis were conducted based on Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method and Poncelet model, respectively. A good agreement exits between analytical and numerical penetration trajectories and velocity-penetration relationships with an initial impact velocity of 200 m/s, while the discrepancies increase with a higher velocity of 600 m/s. The comparison between analytical and numerical results reveals that the developed numerical model is able to reasonably predict the impact responses of different skin layers under micro-particle impact. The present work is a first step to study high-velocity micro-particle impact responses applying real multilayered skin structures and mechanical properties, which could be further investigated to interpret and guide the design of transdermal drug delivery equipment.