Shear viscoelastic properties of human orbital fat

Abstract

The shear viscoelastic behavior of eye’s supporting orbital fat is unstudied in humans, yet is important during and after rapid movement. This investigation quantified viscoelastic characteristics of human orbital fat in constitutive form suitable for numerical simulation.

Fresh human orbital fat was harvested postmortem from 6 male and 7 female donors of average age 78 ± 13 years. Fat samples were trimmed to disks of 20 ± 3.0 (standard deviation) mm average diameter and 2.1 ± 0.2 mm thickness. In 8 samples each, the following four testing protocols were performed: strain sweep from 0.0015 $to$ 50 % at 1 Hz; viscometry at 0.1 s⁻¹ shear rate; stress relaxation at physiological temperature; and frequency sweep from 0.159 to 15.9 Hz at 0.5 % strain to validate the Prony series parameters fitting stress relaxation behavior.

Orbital fat exhibited viscoelastic behavior under dynamic shear with a 0.5 % linear viscoelastic strain limit. Storage modulus $G^{\prime }$ averaged 737 ± 310 Pa, and loss modulus $G^{″}$ averaged 197 ± 76 Pa. Values were similar for strain and frequency sweep testing. At rupture, shear stress averaged 617 ± 366 Pa and rupture strain averaged 200 ± 70 %. The long-term relaxation modulus averaged 646 ± 264 Pa at 100 s. Frequency sweep testing validated the parameters of the Prony series fitted to the experimental stress relaxation data.

Human orbital fat is linearly viscoelastic within a range typical of biological materials, and exhibits similar viscoelastic behavior for strain and frequency sweep testing. Stress relaxation data for human orbital fat has been parameterized for constitutive models that can be implemented in finite element analysis.