Uniaxial compression testing and Cauchy stress modeling to design anatomical silicone replicas

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Anatomically realistic organ replicas or phantoms allow for accurate studies and reproducible research. To recreate a human kidney, mimicry of the elastic properties of the human kidney is crucial. However, none of the related work addressed the design and development of a kidney phantom using only silicone as material. In contrast to paraffin and hydrogel, silicone is an ideal variant for its extended shelf life, soft-tissue-like feeling, and viscoelastic modularity. To this end, we conducted Uniaxial Compression testing and Cauchy stress modeling. Results indicate that none of the available manufacturer silicone brands are suitable for the task of creating a realistic kidney phantom. Indeed, the tested silicone mixtures in low and high strain fall outside the required approximate target compressive moduli of 20 kPa and 500 kPa, respectively. This work provides a frame of reference for future work by avoiding the pitfalls of the selected ready-made silicones and reusing the reported theoretical and experimental setup to design a realistic replica of the kidney organ.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number11849
JournalScientific reports
Volume10
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2020
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 32678280
ORCID /0000-0002-4590-1908/work/163294099

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas