BIOCONTACT · Contact Mechanics of Soft and Complex Biological Tissues
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-04-01 → 2021-09-30
- EU contribution
- €212,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
Contact Mechanics of Soft and Complex Biological Tissues
This project focused on the investigation of the contact mechanics of biological materials, such as skin and internal tissues, which present inhomogeneous, anisotropic, and swollen behavior. Since biological tissues are usually arranged in multi-layer strata, the assumption of homogeneous half-space behavior (common in classical contact mechanics studies) falls short in describing their continuum mechanics response, and the geometry of the contacting bodies has to be taken into account. For these reasons, in order to model the contact behavior of biological thin tissues at the level of accuracy required for scientific purposes and industrial R&D applications, a specific contact mechanics model is needed, able to deal with thin viscoelastic layers opportunely assembled to mimic the composition of real tissues. Several real-life applications will benefit from this study as it provides, for instance, the chance to model the contact between the eyelid, the contact lens and the cornea epithelium, thus allowing for the optimization of the contact lens mechanical and biological compatibility against the surrounding tissues. By exploiting BIOCONTACT results, advanced contact mechanics studies could be led to specifically take into account for the thickness and viscoelasticity of the eyelid tissue, eventually allowing for the optimization of the lens in terms of surface roughness, thickness and adhesion energy, aiming at enhancing the final user comfort. Similarly, also the mechanical compatibility of prosthetic bones with surrounding tissues (e.g., muscles or connective tissues) will be enhanced by means of BIOCONTACT results, as the accurate prediction of the contacting normal and tangential stresses acting on the soft biological tissues provides an efficient tool to reduce bedsores in long-term bedridden patients. For these reasons, the main objective of BIOCONTACT was to develop an advanced contact mechanics model able to accurately describe the contact behavior of elastic/viscoelastic thin layers in the presence of repulsive and adhesive interfacial interactions, which could therefore be employed in investigating the mechanical behavior of biological contacts involving thin tissues with specific interfacial interactions. Moreover, aiming at allowing the broadest possible field of applications to benefit from the project output, we sought for a parametric model which can be also adopted in studying the general-purpose contact mechanics of rubber-like materials.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
In the last decade, a number of medical and bio-engineering challenges, requiring a deep understanding of the phenomena occurring at biological interfaces, have intensified scientific interest in the field of biological contact mechanics. BIOCONTACT will develop an innovative methodology to tackle bio-lubricated contacts involving soft tissues in the presence of complex fluids, enhancing the understanding of these interactions, by pursuing new models and numerical methodologies, specifically suited for this class of problem. This approach is key to provide long-term societal benefits by solving long-standing issues including the prevention of hospital bedsores, the mechanical compatibility of prosthetic implants or contact lens, and the optimization of surgical procedures and tools. In particular, my vision is to first build a mechanical model for biological soft tissues that specifically uses constitutive laws for multi-layered linear viscoelastic materials. This model will be then implemented in a newly developed contact mechanics solver, based on improved Boundary Element Method schemes that I have recently proposed, and that will be able to capture specific chemo-mechanical local responses adopting mean potentials that rely on atomistic and molecular descriptions of the interface. In the framework of inverse analysis, the material properties of individual layers will be tuned to best replicate the experimental behavior captured using an innovative procedure. This relies on a new scale separation methodology and is able to probe different zones and layers within the tissue. Finally, in order to provide a complete and widely applicable tool, solid-liquid interaction will be addressed by coupling the contact model with a lubrication model, based on non-Newtonian Reynolds theory. The development of this ready-to-use numerical tool will foster the uptake of my proposed methodologies for use in the above mentioned complex cases of industrial and medical relevance.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE · LondonCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union