Quiz 3

Submitted to: Dr. Waqas Akbar Lughmani

Submitted by: Sultan Mehmood Ghaznavi

Reg no: MME193003

Case Liver

Solution
1. Simulation of Viscoelasticity of Liver Soft Tissues
In vehicle crashes, the liver is the most often injured abdominal organ. In the previous
studies in the past, the liver was always modeled with hyperelastic materials. In this
study, the viscoelasticity of the liver under compression was simulated in ANSYS.
2. Finite Element Model
The liver lay on a plate and was compressed by a cylinder on the top. The whole model
was meshed with Plane182 in plane strain condition (see Figure 1).

FIGURE 1 Finite element model of testing of liver soft tissues.

3. Material Properties
The liver was modeled with the one-term Ogden model, and its viscoelasticity was
simulated with the Prony Series. The material parameters, which are listed in Table 1,
were defined by ANSYS APDL commands as under: -
TB,HYPE,1,1,1,OGDEN
TBDATA,1,3.7e-2,5.59,
TB,PRONY,1,1,3,SHEAR
tbdata,1,6.9701e-3,10,5.83e-2,100,3.53e-2,1000

Table 1. Material parameters of the liver

4. Results
The von Mises stresses of the model at the end of the first and second steps are
presented in Figures 3 and 4, respectively. The stresses are localized around the
loading area, and the maximum stress decrease was around 10% between the first step
and second step. Figure 5 illustrates the time history of the reaction force, which
decreases with time and then approaches a constant after 600s.
 FIGURE 3 vM stresses of soft tissues at the end of the first step (t = 0.1s) (MPa).

FIGURE 4 vM stresses of soft tissues at the end of the second step (t = 1000s) (MPa)

FIGURE 5 Reaction force with time

5. Discussion
A 2D finite element model of the liver was built to study its viscoelastic response under
the compression of a cylinder. The reaction force decreases with time and approaches
a constant after a certain time, which is because the elastic Ogden model controls its
stress response in the first loading step, and the Prony series governs its viscoelastic
behavior. Without a definition of the Prony series in the material model, the stress state
and reaction force should not change in the second step.
The drawback of this study is that the liver was simplified as plane strain state, which
significantly differs from the true liver. Future studies should use a 3D model of the liver
with the geometry from a CT scan.