Computational modelling of the mechanical behavior of the colon

Study Purpose: It is well established that stresses and strains are crucial to the function of any tissue that performs mechanical work. As stresses can only be computed but not measured, a biomechanical model of the lower GI tract is essential to fully analyze the mechanical behavior of the lower GI in health and disease. In this work, we implemented a material constitutive model for the colon tissue into the Finite Element software Abaqus, which is commonly used for biomechanical simulations.

Data Collection: An Abaqus user subroutine for 3D material behavior was implemented and validated on an example case (inflation of a swine colon using previously published material parameters). The dataset provided here contains the material user subroutine file (Fortran format) and simulation files (Abaqus generated files: inp, odb, etc.) from the validation example. A Jupyter notebook (ipynb format) is also included for postprocessing the model predicted stress values and comparing them to expected value from analytical calculations. The total dataset size is about 2 GB and contains 30 files.

Primary Conclusion: The model implemented in this work can accurately capture the mechanical behavior of the swine colon under inflation. The model and the estimated parameters can be used in a Finite Element framework to conduct simulations with realistic geometry of the swine colon. The resulting computational model will provide a foundation for virtual assessment of safe and effective devices for the treatment of colonic diseases.

Curator's Notes

Experimental Design: A computation model of swine colon inflation.

Completeness: This dataset is complete.

Subjects & Samples: This is a computational model dataset, thus no subjects are described. Inflation-extension test data available from a previously published work in 5 pig colon samples were used.