Articular cartilage (AC) is the soft tissue covering the end of long bones such as knee and hip joints. It offers load-bearing and lubricating characteristics attributed to its poroelastic structure and the load sharing between fluid and solid phases of the tissue. However, AC is vulnerable to Osteoarthritis (OA), a progressive disease that affects the structure-function of the tissue, ultimately leading to pain and loss of mobility in patients. Previous studies have suggested functional materials such as hydrogels to replace cartilage lesions, maintain healthy regions, and ultimately postponing the total joint replacement surgery. To mimic physiologically relevant characteristics of AC, the candidate should generate interstitial fluid pressure to the extent comparable to that of the tissue. However, many candidates reported in the literature still need to achieve this.
In this project, you will perform stress-relaxation tests in the lab on healthy AC samples extracted from bovine patellae to characterise elastic and viscoelastic properties such as Young`s moduli (instantaneous and relaxed) of AC. These serve as inputs to a computational model of the cartilage mimic and for validation purposes. You will then develop simplified finite element models using ABAQUS or FEBio to investigate the effect of strain rate, permeability, fibre reinforcement, etc., on fluid load support, i.e., the fraction of load applied on tissue that is tolerated by fluid pressure. It is expected that the models provide further insights into fluid pressure distribution, stress distributuion, etc. and enable you to propose requirements of a replacement material for the AC.
Undergraduate
None
No lab has been assigned to this project