title: Mechanics of cutaneous wound rupture.
abstract: A cutaneous wound may rupture during healing as a result of stretching in the skin and incompatibility at the wound-skin interface, among other factors. By treating both wound and skin as hyperelastic membranes, and using a biomechanical framework of interfacial growth, we study rupturing as a problem of cavitation in nonlinear elastic materials. We obtain analytical solutions for deformation and residual stress field in the skin-wound configuration while emphasizing the coupling between wound rupture and wrinkling in the skin. The solutions are analyzed in detail for variations in stretching environment, healing condition, and membrane stiffness.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208016, India.
authors.forename: Digendranath
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Swain
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208016, India. Electronic address: ag@iitk.ac.in.
authors.forename: Anurag
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gupta
mesh_terms: D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D004548:Elasticity; D006801:Humans; D012867:Skin / Q000293:injuries*; D012879:Skin Physiological Phenomena; D013314:Stress, Mechanical; D014945:Wound Healing
keywords: Cavitation; Cutaneous wound healing; Interfacial growth; Residual stress; Wound rupture; Wrinkling