Routine hernia repair surgery involves the implant of synthetic mesh. However, this proceduremay give rise to several problems causing considerable patient disability. With the aim ofimproving surgical procedures, the healthy and the herniated human abdomen are simulatedusing finite element (FE) simulations. For that purpose, a reconstruction of the physiologicalgeometry of a human abdomen was created using magnetic resonance images. Besides,following the anatomy of the abdomen, the different

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... scles and aponeurosis were defined.Furthermore, collagen fibres were included in each muscle layer and their passive anisotropicmechanical contribution was modelled within the framework of hyperelasticity. In the FEsimulation of the abdomen, the constraint imposed by the shoulder is applied and an internalpressure of 23 kPa was applied to the interior abdominal wall to reproduce the abdominal loadwhen standing jumping. After generating a hernia in the front of the abdomen, differentprostheses (Surgipro®, Optilene® and Infinit®), modelled using a membrane model, are placedin the defect to simulate the behaviour of the abdomen after the surgical procedure. In thehealthy abdomen, maximal principal stresses (MPS) and displacements (MD) appear in thefront of the belly. On the other hand, once the hernia is created and the mesh is placed, theMD and MPS are higher than those attained in the healthy abdomen. Thus, just after surgery,surgical repair procedure does not fully restore normal physiological conditions and the risk ofhernia recurrence by the suture is high due to the stress concentration.