The spatio-temporal mechanical environment of healthy and injured human cartilage during sustained activity and its role in cartilage damage

Abstract

Recently we presented a computational model of articular cartilage calibrated for normal human tissue explants. This model was able to capture the transient deformation of cartilage experiencing a cyclic load. The model takes into account the tension-compression nonlinearity of the cartilage and incorporates the dependency of the compressive stiffness and fluid permeability of cartilage on the deformation-dependent aggrecan concentration in cartilage tissue. As such it represents a leading constitutive model of articular cartilage. Here we build on the previous study to develop an experimentally validated computational model to simulate mechanical consolidation response of intact and previou..