Investigation of long-term cyclic loading effects on initially intact cartilage

Cartilage, particularly its collagen network, has been suggested by many to be fatigue prone, but the mechanism via which fatigue damage occurs is not yet well-understood. This work seeks to provide a simple framework to further our understanding of the degeneration of this tissue a result of fatigue damage via experimentation and analytical modeling. It was as observed that subjecting initially intact bovine tibial plateau cartilage to repeated long-term applications of an indentation loading protocol, which does not induce any observable damage over a single short-term application, can result in surface damage. The damage can be associated with an increase in the GAG release and decrease in the tissue nominal equilibrium modulus. The ability of the tissue to regain its original configuration also deteriorated with increasing number of loading cycles, but the change was generally gradual. Changes in the optimized parameters obtained from fitting a 1-D rheological model to both the relaxation and cyclic loading responses of cartilage in the undamaged and damaged states suggested that both GAG and collagen have been weakened as a result of damage. A portfolio of data describing the 3-D mechanical behavior of calf tibial plateau cartilage was obtained in this work. It was found that both the axial and lateral responses of cartilage were nonlinear during stress relaxation. Also, the resistance of the tissue to shear and volumetric deformation is dissipative, with the same time constants.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Wu, Bruce Y. C., 1980-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Martha L. Gray and Simona Socrate.

• Materials Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42137

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/42137