A New Skin Frictional Property Testing Apparatus

A new skin frictional property testing apparatus has been developed for measuring skin frictional properties of human and animal both in-vivo and in-vitro.The frictional properties between various skins and a prosthetic socket material under the same and different test conditions were measured Results show that the precision of normal loading of the apparatus researches 99.59%.The friction coefficients of pig skin in-vitro under the same test condition exhibited gooe repeatability.The friction coefficients measured at different sites of upper and lower limbs were comparable.There are significant differences(P<0.005) in friction coefficient only on the hands and no differences on the other anatomical regions.The friction coefficients measured at rabbit skins under two modes of imposed load and imposed reciprocating frequency were also comparable.The friction coefficients decreased with increasing normal load and increased with increasing reciprocating frequency.The histological configuration between unworn skin and worn skin by reciprocal sliding friction had significant difference.