Mechanical Simulation of Human Pleura for Medical Training by Crosslinked Polyurethane

Abstract

Due to the absence of abundant mechanical data on human tissues, currently used medical training materials and devices are not well simulated by synthetics, which hampers the ability of trainees such as soldiers to best master first-aid methods. The present study is to use crosslinked polyurethanes (PU) to simulate mechanical properties of human tissues, starting with pleura, to develop an appropriate synthetic simulator for military medical training. As a result, two partial crosslinked PUs are proved to be promising candidates for pleura simulator, with perfect matches on ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and stretch ratio (SR) of human pleura, indicating the great potential to use PU synthetics to mimic the mechanical behavior of pleura and other human tissues for medical training purpose.