title: Effect of sample preservation on stress softening and permanent set of porcine skin.
abstract: Skin is a composite material with a complex structure which exhibits a wide range of behaviours such as anisotropy, viscoelasticity, hyperelasticity, plasticity etc. Indeed it remains a great challenge to understand its behaviour as it is involved in many consumer and medical applications. In most studies, experiments are performed in situ or in vitro on fresh tissues but most of the time samples are preserved before testing (fridge, freezer, saline solution etc.). In this paper, the impact of samples conservation on the softening behaviour and on the permanent set is studied in order to select the appropriate conservation protocol. Samples are extracted from several pigs' abdomens (direction parallel to spine) and the mechanical testing consists in loading-unloading uniaxial tension tests instrumented with digital image correlation inducing thus reliable strain measurements in a chosen region of interest. The results of this study revealed that preservation conditions must be carefully chosen; conservation in a saline solution and freezing without any caution alter the irreversible part of the global mechanical behaviour of the tissues.
authors.affiliation: C2MA, Ecole des Mines d'Alès, Alès, France. Electronic address: Anne-Sophie.Caro@mines-ales.fr.
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Caro-Bretelle
authors.affiliation: C2MA, Ecole des Mines d'Alès, Alès, France.
authors.forename: P N
authors.initials: PN
authors.lastname: Gountsop
authors.affiliation: C2MA, Ecole des Mines d'Alès, Alès, France.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ienny
authors.affiliation: C2MA, Ecole des Mines d'Alès, Alès, France.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Leger
authors.affiliation: C2MA, Ecole des Mines d'Alès, Alès, France.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Corn
authors.affiliation: LGEI, Ecole des Mines d'Alès, Alès, France.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bazin
authors.affiliation: Aix-Marseille Université, Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses Tropicales et Emergentes, UM63, CNRS 7278, IRD 198, INSERM 1095, Marseille, France.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bretelle
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016880:Anisotropy; D008422:Materials Testing; D012867:Skin; D013048:Specimen Handling; D013314:Stress, Mechanical; D013552:Swine; D014783:Viscosity
keywords: Digital image correlation; Mechanical properties; Porcine skin; Sample preservation; Uniaxial tensile test