Incidence of Temperature and Indenter Diameter on the Mechanical Response of Skin during Indentation Test

IntroductionIn vivo tests and design of experiment were carried out to determine the influence of indenter diameter and temperature on the mechanical response of soft tissue.Material and methodsThis study proposes an analysis to obtain the Young's modulus of skin through the use of indentation tests in combination with the Hertz's theory for contact. A design of experiments was developed to determine the incidence of two factors: temperature and indenter diameter, on the mechanical behavior of the skin.ResultsThe factors and their interactions are not statistically significant with a p-value higher than 0.05.Discussion/conclusionsThe mean value (±SD) obtained for all eight measurements on the volunteer subject was 28.5 ± 6.9 kPa for E, Young's modulus.