Tensile testing is an essential experiment to assess the mechanical integrity of musculoskeletal soft tissues, yet standard test methods have not been developed to ensure the quality and reproducibility of these experiments. The ASTM international standards organization has created tensile test standards for common industry materials that specify geometric dimensions of test specimens (coupons) that promote valid failures within the gauge section (midsubstance), away from the grips. This study examined whether ASTM test standards for plastics, elastomers, and fiber-reinforced composites are suitable for tensile testing of bovine meniscus along the circumferential fiber direction. We found that dumbbell shaped coupons based on ASTM standards for elastomers and plastics had an 80% and 60% rate of midsubstance failures, respectively. The rate of midsubstance failures dropped to 20% when using straight coupons based on ASTM standards for fiber-reinforced composites. The mechanical properties of dumbbell shaped coupons were also significantly greater than straight coupons. Finite element models of the test coupons revealed stress distributions that supported our experimental findings. In addition, we found that a commercial deli-slicer was able to slice meniscus to uniform layer thicknesses that were within ASTM dimensional tolerances. This study provides methods, recommendations, and insights that can advance the standardization of tensile testing in meniscus and other soft fibrous tissues.
Meniscal tears are a common, painful, and debilitating knee injury with limited treatment options. Computational models that predict meniscal tears may help advance injury prevention and repair, but first these models must be validated using experimental data. Here we simulated meniscal tears with finite element analysis using continuum damage mechanics (CDM) in a transversely isotropic hyperelastic material. Finite element models were built to recreate the coupon geometry and loading conditions of forty uniaxial tensile experiments of human meniscus that were pulled to failure either parallel or perpendicular to the preferred fiber orientation. Two damage criteria were evaluated for all experiments: von Mises stress and maximum normal Lagrange strain. After we successfully fit all models to experimental force–displacement curves (grip-to-grip), we compared model predicted strains in the tear region at ultimate tensile strength to the strains measured experimentally with digital image correlation (DIC). In general, the damage models underpredicted the strains measured in the tear region, but models using von Mises stress damage criterion had better overall predictions and more accurately simulated experimental tear patterns. For the first time, this study has used DIC to expose strengths and weaknesses of using CDM to model failure behavior in soft fibrous tissue.
The calculation of tensile mechanical properties from stress-strain curves is a fundamental step in characterizing material behavior, yet no standardized method exists to perform these calculations for soft tissue. To address this deficiency, we developed a free web application called Dots-on-Plots (https://ntm.boisestate.edu/dots-on-plots/) that fully automates the calculation of tensile mechanical properties from stress-strain curves. The analyzed mechanical properties include the strength, strain, and energy at four points of interest (transition, yield, ultimate, and rupture), and the linear modulus. Users of Dots-on-Plots can upload multiple files, view and download results, and adjust threshold settings. This study determined a threshold setting that minimized error when calculating the transition point, where the stress-strain curve “transitions” from a non-linear “toe” region to a linear region. Using the optimal threshold (2% stress deviation from a linear region fit), Dots-on-Plots calculated the transition strains from twenty tensile experiments of human meniscus to be 0.049 +/- 0.007, which nearly matched the known transition strain values of 0.050 +/- 0.006 (determined using finite element parameter optimization). The sensitivity of the calculated transition strain to the shape of various stress-strain curves was analyzed using sets of model generated synthetic data. This free web application offers a convenient and reliable tool to systematically enhance the speed, transparency and consistency of mechanical analysis across biomedical research groups.
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