Mathematical Modeling and Simulations for Large-Strain J-Shaped Diagrams of Soft Biological Materials

Polymers (Basel). 2018 Jun 29;10(7):715. doi: 10.3390/polym10070715.

Abstract

Herein, we study stress⁻strain diagrams of soft biological materials such as animal skin, muscles, and arteries by Finsler geometry (FG) modeling. The stress⁻strain diagram of these biological materials is always J-shaped and is composed of toe, heel, linear, and failure regions. In the toe region, the stress is almost zero, and the length of this zero-stress region becomes very large (≃150%) in, for example, certain arteries. In this paper, we study long-toe diagrams using two-dimensional (2D) and 3D FG modeling techniques and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. We find that, except for the failure region, large-strain J-shaped diagrams are successfully reproduced by the FG models. This implies that the complex J-shaped curves originate from the interaction between the directional and positional degrees of freedom of polymeric molecules, as implemented in the FG model.

Keywords: Finsler geometry; J-shaped diagram; Monte Carlo; soft biological materials; statistical mechanics; stress–strain diagram.