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Skeletal muscle tensile strain dependence: Hyperviscoelastic nonlinearity
Benjamin B Wheatley1, Duane A Morrow2, Gregory M Odegard3
1Soft Tissue Mechanics Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University, 1374 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, CO 80523, United States.
Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials
|September 27, 2015
Summary
Skeletal muscle tissue properties are strain-dependent. A nonlinear hyperviscoelastic model accurately captures this behavior, improving computational models of muscle performance.
Area of Science:
- Biomechanics
- Computational Biology
- Tissue Engineering
Background:
- Accurate computational modeling of skeletal muscle necessitates tissue-level characterization.
- While hyperelasticity is commonly studied, skeletal muscle exhibits complex nonlinear time-dependent and time-independent behaviors.
- Understanding these properties as a function of strain is crucial for advanced modeling.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate and model the nonlinear, time-independent, and time-dependent properties of skeletal muscle tissue.
- To assess the strain-dependent behavior of skeletal muscle material properties.
- To develop and validate a constitutive model capable of capturing these complex behaviors.
Main Methods:
- Tibialis anterior muscles from New Zealand White rabbits underwent stress relaxation tests at varying strain levels.
- Individual relaxation steps were fitted using a three-term linear Prony series.
- A fully nonlinear hyperviscoelastic constitutive model was implemented to analyze strain dependence.
Main Results:
- Instantaneous modulus and mid-range relaxation significantly increased with strain.
- Longer-term relaxation decreased with increasing strain, while time constants and relaxation ratio remained strain-independent.
- The fully nonlinear hyperviscoelastic model demonstrated superior accuracy in fitting experimental data compared to linear models.
Conclusions:
- Skeletal muscle exhibits significant strain-dependent material properties at the tissue level.
- Incorporating this strain dependence into computational models is essential for accurate skeletal muscle performance prediction.
- A fully nonlinear hyperviscoelastic model effectively represents these complex tissue-level behaviors.
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