Abstract：The stress on skin suturing has a significant impact on the postoperative healing of the incision. It is necessary to clarify the corresponding mechanism and pattern of skin stress during different incision suturing processes. Based on common surgical incisions for skin suturing, with the standard of horizontal length and incision width, four types of incisions were designed: traditional straight shape, Z shape, S shape, and sawtooth shape. Considering that excessive deformation of the sample would reduce the extraction of experimental data and be unfavorable for the study of the reduction tension rule during the sample stretching process, the failure load tests of corresponding suturing structures were carried out and an appropriate test range was determined for the reduction tension research; based on the material constitutive model obtained from the sample stretching test, the stress distribution and strain distribution along different suturing incisions were theoretically analyzed; using the digital image correlation method, the strain distribution generated during the suturing process in different incision suture areas was obtained; finally, through the comparison of experiments and simulations, the tension distribution effect of the skin at the suture line was further explored. The results show that the shape of the incision is the basis for tension reduction. Compared with the traditional straight incision, the Z shape, S shape, and sawtooth shape incisions can reduce the suture tension due to the actual incision being longer and having a certain curvature. The tension reduction effect is better under low to medium loads, and it will decrease as the external load increases, but it is still significantly better than the straight incision. Under the same load, the sawtooth shape incision has the minimum main strain during suture, that is, the tension reduction effect is the best.
2025, Vol. 46 
