In vivo measurement of the anisotropic mechanical properties of human skin by indentation test

A novel approach is presented to determine the anisotropic mechanical properties of human skin in vivo by indentation method. In this paper, the skin is considered as an anisotropic elastomer due to fiber reinforcement with an additional property of limiting extensibility. The associated theory of indentation method is presented and specialized to the particular case of the constitutive behaviors of skin so as to establish the theory basis of this work. The indentation tests are performed on the inner forearm in the relaxant and uniaxially pre-stretched state, respectively. Different from the conventional indentation tests, a special optical system is used to capture the contact morphology in real time. The results demonstrate that the eccentricity of the elliptical contact region changes with the pre-stretch on the ground that the eccentricity has a dependence on the degree of anisotropy.