A predictive microstructure inspired approach for anisotropic damage, residual stretches and hysteresis in biodegradable sutures

We propose a predictive model for the mechanical behavior of biodegradable polymers of interest for biomedical applications. Starting from a detailed description of the network behavior of the copolymer material, taking care of bonds breaking and recrosslinking effects, folded–unfolded transitions and network topological constraints, we deduce a macroscopic law for the complex mechanical behavior of many biomedical materials with a particular focus on absorbable suture threads and a perspective to new material design. A crucial novelty of the model is the careful description of the observed microscopic anisotropic damage induced by the deformation, here described based on the classical microsphere integration approach. The resulting energy, characterized by few material parameters, with a physically clear interpretation, is successfully adopted to predict our cyclic experiments on poliglecaprone sutures with anisotropic damage, permanent stretch and internal hysteresis. By also studying other suture materials behavior we show that the predictivity properties of the model can be extended also to materials with a different mechanical response and thus also possibly applied for the design of new, high-performance biomedical materials.