On the choice of mathematical functions to model damage in anisotropic soft tissues

Abstract

Soft tissues display highly non linear behaviour under various mechanical loads. Due to various diseases, injury or when exposed to supra physiological loads, soft tissues demonstrate a softening behaviour or damage. Continuum damage models coupled with continuum material models have been successful in mathematically predicting the damage in tissues. Continuum models also incorporate anisotropy to give better predictions of the response of tissues at higher stretch values. In this work, three different mathematical decaying functions (exponential, logarithmic and stretched exponential) have been adopted to propose continuum damage models for anisotropic soft tissues. The model predictions were compared with the experimental data of uniaxial extension from literature. The stretched exponential function with the least computed error demonstrated the most accurate performance for predicting the damage in soft tissues. A general algorithm for the procedure was also remarked upon.