When they are damaged or injured, soft biological tissues are able to self-repair and heal. Mechanics is critical during the healing process, as the damaged extracellular matrix (ECM) tends to be replaced with a new undamaged ECM supporting homeostatic stresses. Computational modeling has been commonly used to simulate the healing process. However, there is a pressing need to have a unified thermodynamics theory for healing. From the viewpoint of continuum damage mechanics, some key parameters related to healing processes, for instance, the volume fraction of newly grown soft tissue and the growth deformation, can be regarded as internal variables and have related evolution equations. This paper is aiming to establish this unified framework inspired by thermodynamics for continuum damage models for the healing of soft biological tissues. The significant advantage of the proposed model is that no \textit{ad hoc} equations are required for describing the healing process. Therefore, this new model is more concise and offers a universal approach to simulate the healing process. Three numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, which is in good agreement with the existing works, including an application for balloon angioplasty in an arteriosclerotic artery with a fiber cap.
翻译:软生物组织在受损或受伤时能够自我修复和治愈。 机械在愈合过程中至关重要, 因为受损的外细胞矩阵( EMM) 往往被替换为新的无损伤的外细胞矩阵( EMM) 支持软生物组织压力。 计算模型通常用于模拟愈合过程。 但是, 迫切需要有一个统一的热力学理论来进行愈合。 从连续损害力力学的角度来看, 与愈合过程有关的一些关键参数, 比如, 新生长的软组织的数量部分和生长变形, 可以被视为内部变量, 并具有相关的进化方程式。 本文旨在建立这个由热力模型启发的统一框架, 用于治疗软生物组织的连续损伤模型。 拟议的模型的主要优点是, 无需使用 \ textitit{ adsummad} 方程式来描述愈合过程。 因此, 新模型更简洁, 提供了一种模拟愈合过程的通用方法。 提供了三个数字示例, 以证明拟议模型的有效性, 它与现有作品中具有良好协议性, 包括一个气压的气球 。