Affiliations: Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA | Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA | Spine Research Laboratory, Spine Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, USA
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Dr. P. Smolinski, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Pittsburgh, 648 Benedum Hall, 3700 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA. Tel.: +1 412 624 9788; Fax: +1 412 624 4846; E-mail: patsmol@pitt.edu.
Abstract: Tissue engineering approaches are now being investigated for altering the course of intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD). Because the disease changes the mechanical properties of the load bearing tissues of the disc, viscoelastic tissue behavior is a key measure for comparing the efficacy of treatments. To investigate the basic viscoelastic behavior of nucleus pulposus tissue, tissue from the rabbit disc was tested in torsional creep. Both the Andrade and Nutting creep models had a good fit to the data, however, the Andrade creep model gave a much better prediction of the longer term creep. This is the first application of Andrade creep to biological tissue and results indicate that this model may be particularly well suited for characterizing the viscoelastic behavior of very soft biological tissues.
Keywords: Viscoelasticity, intervertebral disc, torsion, Nutting model
DOI: 10.3233/BIR-2010-0564
Journal: Biorheology, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 143-151, 2010
