A proposal to evaluate the fibers' break probability in ligaments and tendons

Understanding the yield and failure mechanisms of ligaments and tendons is important to have a deeper knowledge of their structure and function. Evaluating what are the limits of the human body is also important to prevent injuries in workers, in athletes and the elderly. The tissue yield mechanism was analyzed by modifying and extending a probabilistic model of collagen bundles. Since not usable experimental data are available in the literature, the model and the method were tested using Monte Carlo simulations. The simulations showed many crucial aspects of the model and gave some indications about possible future real validation experiments. The analysis of the correlation between the simulated data, the model (R²) and the Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR) highlighted the most important parameters that affect effectiveness of the described method: number of fibers, elongation step, noise. This analysis also showed that the numerical differentiation algorithms of the data have a key role on the accuracy of the yield assessment. However, the results also showed that the method is able to correctly estimate the elongation break distribution of the fibers of ligaments and tendons.