Investigation of dynamic behavior of human skin tissue under micro-particle impact in the context of transdermal drug delivery: numerical and analytical perspectives

• Dynamic behavior of human soft tissue under impact is explored. • Micro-particles impact of rigid spheres into human skin are investigated. • Hyperelastic law is implemented to simulate soft tissues. • Hybrid SPH-FE models is developed for the numerical modelling of the penetration. • Analytical data are compared to numerical simulations. The understanding of the impact of high-velocity microparticles on human skin tissue is important for the administration of drugs during transdermal drug delivery. This paper aims to numerically investigate the dynamic behavior of human skin tissue under micro-particle impact in transdermal drug delivery. The numerical model was developed based on a coupled smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and FEM method via commercial FE software RADIOSS. Analytical analysis was conducted applying the Poncelet model and was used as validation data. A hyperelastic one-term Ogden model with one pair of material parameters ( µ, α ) was implemented for the skin tissue. Sensitivity studies reveal that the effect of parameter α on the penetration process is much more significant than µ . Numerical results correlate well with the analytical curves with various particle diameters and impact velocities, its capability of predicting the penetration process of micro-particle impacts into skin tissues. This work can be further investigated to guide the design of transdermal drug delivery equipment.