Mechanical skin pain and comfort evaluation model applied to skin-integrated electronics

Skin-integrated electronics have received significant attention in medical and health monitoring. Due to improper usage or design, skin pains and discomfort tend to occur in users of skin-integrated electronics, particularly in patients with nervous system damage. This paper presented a theoretical model for evaluating the skin pain and comfort of skin-integrated electronics, based on the physiological process of human pain perception. Additionally, the impact of glial cell reduction on pain caused by damage to the nervous system was analyzed. The simulations were carried out to analyze the skin pain sensation under three different mechanical stimuli from typical skin-integrated electronics, which included: mechanics model of multilayer skin, nerve signal transduction based on Hodgkin-Huxley model, transmission and perception rooted in gate control theory. The stress distribution demonstrated by finite element analysis on the multilayer skin was produced using the viscoelasticity theory. Among three different mechanical stimuli from typical skin-integrated electronics, the numerical experiments obtained the appropriate load for rapid pain response and comfort design, respectively. Furthermore, factors influence the skin pain perception were discussed including skin thickness and number of glial cells, which could contribute to the design of skin-integrated electronics in medical applications.