Design of biomimetic low-drag medical suture needle and numerical simulation on penetrating process

Abstract

Aiming at the problem that the puncture drag of the medical suture needle produced in the suture process will cause damage to the soft tissue,and the greater the puncture drag is,the higher the damage degree is,a biomimetic model of low-drag medical suture needle was proposed.The biomimetic prototype of low-drag medical suture needle was constructed,and its needle tip taper/radius and needle body curvature were designed based on the morphological/structural characteristics of the thorn in Ziziphus jujube,and vertical stripe grooves were set on the needle body,forming the biomimetic model of low-drag medical suture needles.LS-DYNA software and Coulomb friction model were used to simulate the process of biomimetic low-drag medical suture needle penetrating skin soft tissue.The results show that the needle body with vertical stripe grooves can reduce the puncture drag of low-drag medical suture needle with the thorn tip taper/radius and the thorn body curvature by 34.24%~58.48%,and can reduce the puncture drag of low-drag medical suture needle with the thorn tip taper/radius by 30.26%~49.86%.The biomimetic low-drag medical suture needles were fabricated and their puncture drag was experimentally tested.In the penetrating process,the puncture drag of biomimetic low-drag medical suture needle was reduced by 43.02%.The results reveal the influence mechanism of the morphological/structural characteristics of medical suture needle on its puncture drag,and provide a theoretical reference for the biomimetic design of low-drag medical suture needle.

Keywords

• biomimetic engineering; low-drag; medical suture needle; non-smooth structure; numerical simulation