Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 25, 2026

Extracting the Young's Modulus of Native Murine Pulmonary Basement Membranes from Atomic Force Microscopy Derived Force Maps
Published on: January 31, 2025
Young's modulus measurement on pig trachea and bronchial airways
Jau-Yi Wang1, Patrick Mesquida, Tak Lee
1Division of Engineering, King’s College London, Strand WC2R 2LS, UK. jauyi.wang@kcl.ac.uk
Abstract:
Young's Modulus was measured on the trachea and first three generations of pig airways by compression. A simple and low-cost system for measuring the elastic properties of small bio-materials is presented. The force-displacement measurements have been undertaken on dissected cartilage and trachea mucosa from pig trachea and bronchial segments. Young's Modulus of trachea wall, 1.78 ± 0.51 MPa, is found to be dominated by the trachea cartilage of value 1.74 ± 0.85 MPa while the modulus for trachea mucosa was 0.15 ± 0.03 MPa. The Young's Modulus of the airway wall from the first three generations of bronchi decreases from 1.35 ± 0.17 to 0.35 ± 0.10 MPa which is also found to be dominated by the airway cartilage. Airway mucosa is found to have similar Young's modulus of 0.036 ± 0.005 MPa for the first three generations of bronchial airways.
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