Growth and remodeling in soft tissues subjected to torsion

Soft tissues grow and remodel in response to mechanical loading. In this work soft tissue is modeled as a homogeneous mixture of two constituents, namely elastin and collagen. It is assumed that elastin is neither produced nor removed and its mass remains constant, whereas collagen turns over depending on the stress in the tissue. A phenomenological continuum model is developed where the response of elastin is assumed to be viscoelastic. The response of collagen is assumed to be elastic.