Engineering Prosthetic Elastomers to Mimic Facial Skin Properties

许多军事战斗损伤涉及头部和颈部。这些损伤往往导致 失去鼻子、眼睛、耳朵或下巴。这些缺失的面部结构不再能够发挥作用， 它们会造成面部畸形当失去的面部结构不能 通过手术矫正后，用人工假肢代替。头面部假体应 将失去的结构复制到最精细的细节，颜色与患者的皮肤相匹配， 皮肤虽然目前使用的材料允许与皮肤充分的颜色匹配，不幸的是， 它们非常坚硬、不可弯曲并且感觉不像皮肤。需要新的材料来更好地复制 人面部皮肤的弹性、可压缩性和触感。 这项研究的目标是开发新一代的柔性材料， 制造出感觉像人类面部皮肤的面部假体。该项目将依靠工程 优化方法，以帮助设计和测试新的配方，产生的材料能够 再现人的前额、鼻子、下巴、脸颊和耳朵的特定特性。使用物理 性能测量先前获得的这五个领域的脸，柔性聚合物 （塑料）将以在这些位置处再现面部皮肤的方式构造。 纳米填料、聚合物分子量、交联剂含量和共聚单体的组合 混合物将被优化，以实现开发新的假体材料的项目目标。 该项目的成功完成预计将导致产品最终上市 临床医生和anaplastologists。

Many military combat injuries involve the head and neck. Often these injuries result in losses of noses, eyes, ears or jaws. These missing facial structures are no longer able to function, and they produce deformities in facial appearance. When lost facial structures cannot be corrected surgically, they are replaced by artificial prostheses. Head and face prostheses should reproduce lost structures to the finest detail, be color matched to the patient’s skin and feel like skin. Although currently used materials permit adequate color matching with skin, unfortunately they are very rigid, inflexible and do not feel like skin. New materials are needed to better replicate the flexibility, compressibility and feel of human facial skin. The goal of this research is to develop a new generation of flexible materials that will produce facial prostheses that feel like human facial skin. The project will rely on engineering optimization methods to help design and test new formulations that yield materials capable of reproducing specific properties of the human forehead, nose, chin, cheek and ear. Using physical property measurements previously obtained for these five areas of the face, flexible polymers (plastics) will be constructed in a manner that reproduces facial skin at these locations. Combinations of nanofillers, polymer molecular weight, crosslinker content and co-monomer mixtures will be optimized to achieve the project’s goal of developing new prosthetic materials. Successful completion of the project is expected to lead to products eventually becoming available to clinicians and anaplastologists.