A Bond Graph Approach to Modelling of the Human Skin

Diabetes Mellitus has been reported as an increasing issue worldwide, and, among its main complications is the Diabetic Foot Ulcer (DFU). This scenario, caused by the effects of high blood glucose, may lead to the need for limb amputations, which affect the entire health system and the patients’ lives. Modeling the physiological aspects of this issue helps us understand and contribute to research on the diagnosis and treatment of the disease. In this chapter, we present the development and simulations performed on analogous models for the healthy and ulcerated foot systems, obtained through a Bond Graph (BG) approach. We used the BG model to obtain state-space equations that allowed us to analyze and compare the behavior of the systems to a simulated input signal. Our simulations show the unstable behavior of the DFU system including in the Root Locus analysis. The healthy system presented stable behavior during simulations. Such aspects allow us to easily differentiate between both systems and study the possibility of using external controllers for obtaining stability on the DFU system, hence contributing to the development of better treatments and assistive devices.