| description abstract | Computational studies of deep pressure sores (DPS) in skeletal muscles require information on viscoelastic constitutive behavior of muscles, particularly when muscles are loaded transversally as during bone-muscle interaction in sitting and lying immobilized patients. In this study, we measured transient shear moduli G(t) of fresh porcine muscles in vitro using the indentation method. We employed a custom-made pneumatic device that allowed rapid (2000mm∕s)4mm indentations. We tested 8 gluteus muscles, harvested from 5 adult pigs. Each muscle was indented transversally (perpendicularly to the direction of fibers) at 3 different sites, 7 times per site, to obtain nonpreconditioned (NPC) and preconditioned (PC) G(t) data. Short-term (GS) and long-term (GL) shear moduli were obtained directly from experiments. We further fitted measured G(t) data to a biexponential equation G(t)=G1∙exp(−t∕τ1)+G2∙exp(−t∕τ2)+G∞, which provided good fit, visually and in terms of the correlation coefficients. Typically, plateau of the stress relaxation curves (defined as 10% difference from final GL) was evident ∼20s after indentation. Short-term shear moduli GS (mean NPC: 8509Pa, PC: 5711Pa) were greater than long-term moduli GL (NPC: 609Pa, PC: 807Pa) by about an order of magnitude. Statistical analysis of parameters showed that only G2 was affected by preconditioning, while GL, GS, G∞, τ1, τ2, and G1 properties were unaffected. Since DPS develop over time scales of minutes to hours, but most stress relaxation occurs within ∼20s, the most relevant property for computational modeling is GL (mean ∼700Pa), which is, conveniently, unaffected by preconditioning. | |
