Prediction of the softening and damage effects with permanent set in fibrous biological materials

Abstract

Deformation induced softening is an inelastic phenomenon frequently accompanying mechanical response of soft biological tissues. Inelastic phenomena which occur in mechanical testing of biological tissues are very likely to be associated with alterations in the internal structure of these materials. In this study, a novel structural constitutive model is formulated to describe the inelastic effects in soft biological tissues such as Mullins type behavior, damage and permanent set as a result of residual strains after unloading. Anisotropic softening is considered by evolution of internal variables governing the anisotropic properties of the material. We consider two weight factors w i (softening) and s k (discontinuous damage) as internal variables characterizing the structural state of the material. Numerical simulations of several soft tissues are used to demonstrate the performance of the model in reproducing the inelastic behavior of soft biological tissues.