Macro-scale damage characterization of Wharton's jelly membrane undergoing tension

The Wharton's jelly, a mucoid connective tissue of the umbilical cord, is promising for regenerative medicine applications. However it is relatively new and poorly documented especially from a mechanical point of view. To help filling the gap in the literature lack of data, this study seeks to address the Wharton's jelly damage behavior by providing first key results through an efficient analytical approach. The tensile and damage behavior of Wharton's jelly membranes is studied using tensile tests conducted up to failure under close physiological conditions. The Wharton's jelly mechanical response has been characterized using an hyperelastic constitutive model based on the Ogden formulation, enhanced with continuum damage mechanics to capture analytically the damage behavior. To support the mechanical analysis, optical coherence tomography was used to assess the stress-free microstructural arrangement of the collagen fibers, revealing a transversely isotropic architecture. This qualitative insight into the internal structure enriched the interpretation of the mechanical behavior. Overall, this analytical study enabled the identification of a comprehensive set of material parameters characterizing both elastic and damage responses. Pearson correlation matrices were used to reveal meaningful relationships between parameters, potential predictive descriptors, and model's limitations. These findings provide a solid foundation for future modeling developments through numerical simulation and offer new outlooks for surgery and dressing applications.