Inverse analysis and robustness evaluation for biological structure behaviour in FE simulation: application to the liver

Abstract

To prevent abdominal organs traumas, the definition of efficient safety devices should be based on a detailed knowledge of injury mechanisms and related injury criteria. In this sense, FE simulation coupled to experiment could be a valuable tool to provide a better understanding of internal organs behaviour under crash conditions. This work proposes a methodology based on inverse analysis which combines exploration process optimisation and robustness study to obtain mechanical behaviour of the complex structure of the liver through FE simulation. The liver characterisation was build on Mooney Rivlin hyperelastic behaviour law considering whole liver structure under uniform quasi-static compression. With the global method used, the model fits experimental data. The variability induced by modelling parameters is quantified within a reasonable time.

The Role of Ligaments: Patient-Specific or Scenario-Specific?

“…This method is employed to integrate viscoelastic or hyperelastic constitutive laws over the geometric domain of an organ [4]. Intensive work has been done on measurement and estimation of soft tissue constitutive laws [6,3], nevertheless, it is still unclear where the effort should be put to obtain accurate and realistic results [5]. We propose to investigate the role of the surrounding tissues and the boundary conditions that are often under-estimated.…”