Etiology and biomechanics of hernial sac formation

This paper, to the authors' best knowledge, presents the first attempt on the understanding of the biomechanics of hernial sac formation. First, a brief survey of the selected etiological factors and their related theories on hernia is given. Next, the results of some preliminary tensile tests conducted on normal and sac peritoneum are discussed. The third part of the paper is concerned with a theoretical model which incorporates both material and geometric non-linearities by considering deformation of circular membrane under internal fluid pressure. The influence of the material properties of the peritoneal sac, its thickness and its initial radius of curvature, as well as the internal fluid pressure on the growth of the sac are illustrated. The existence of a critical value for a non-dimensional parameter is shown and it is proposed that the herniation process can be viewed as a biomechanically unstable phenomenon in the light of the present model.