Growth induced buckling instability of anisotropic tube and its application in wound edge instability

Abstract

Abstract Fiber reinforced anisotropic material abounds in biological world. It has been demonstrated in previous theoretical and experimental works that growth of biological soft tubular tissue plays a significant role in morphogenesis and pathology. Here we investigate growth-induced buckling of anisotropic cylindrical tissue, focusing on the effects of type of growth(constraint/unconstraint, isotropic/anisotropic), fiber property(orientation, density and strength), geometry and any interaction between these factors. We studied one-layer and two-layer models and obtained a rich spectrum of results. For one-layer model, we demonstrate that circumferential fiber orientation has a consistent stabilizing effect under various scenarios of growth. Higher fiber density has a destabilizing effect by disabling high-mode buckling. For two-layer model, we found that critical buckling strain at inner boundary is an invariant under same isotropic growth rate ratio between inner/ outer layer(g1 /g0). Then we applied our model to wound healing and illustrate the effects of skin residual stress, fiber property, proliferation region width and wound size on the wound edge stability. We conclude that fiber-reinforcement is an important factor to consider when investigating growth induced instability of anisotropic soft tissue.