A linear viscoelastic biphasic model for soft tissues based on the Theory of Porous Media

Based on the Theory of Porous Media (mixture theories extended by the concept of volume fractions), a model describing the mechanical behavior of hydrated soft tissues such as articular cartilage is presented. As usual, the tissue will be modeled as a materially incompressible binary medium of one linear viscoelastic porous solid skeleton saturated by a single viscous pore-fluid. The contribution of this paper is to combine a descriptive representation of the linear viscoelasticity law for the organic solid matrix with an efficient numerical treatment of the strongly coupled solid-fluid problem. Furthermore, deformation-dependent permeability effects are considered. Within the finite element method (FEM), the weak forms of the governing model equations are set up in a system of differential algebraic equations (DAE) in time. Thus, appropriate embedded error-controlled time integration methods can be applied that allow for a reliable and efficient numerical treatment of complex initial boundary-value problems. The applicability and the efficiency of the presented model are demonstrated within canonical, numerical examples, which reveal the influence of the intrinsic dissipation on the general behavior of hydrated soft tissues, exemplarily on articular cartilage.