Biomimetic Model of Articular Cartilage Based on In Vitro Experiments

Articular cartilage is a complicated material to model for a variety of reasons: its biphasic/triphasic properties, heterogeneous structure, compressibility, unique geometry, and variance between samples. However, the applications for a biomimetic, cartilage-like material are numerous and include: porous bearings, viscous dampers, robotic linkages, artificial joints, etc. This work reports experimental results on the stress-relaxation of equine articular cartilage in unconfined compression. The response is consistent with simple spring and damper systems, and gives a storage and loss moduli. This model is proposed for use in evaluating biomimetic materials, and can be incorporated into large-scale dynamic analyses to account for motion or impact. The proposed characterization is suited for high-level analysis of multi-phase materials, where separating the contribution of each phase is not desired.