Background Cartilage is a hydrated soft tissue whose solid matrix consists of negatively charged proteoglycans enmeshed within a fibrillar collagen network. Though many aspects of cartilage mechanics are well understood today, most notably in the context of porous media mechanics, there remain a number of responses observed experimentally whose prediction from theory has been challenging. Method of approach In this study the solid matrix of cartilage is modeled with a continuous fiber angular distribution, where fibers can only sustain tension, swelled by the osmotic pressure of a proteoglycan ground matrix. Results It is shown that this representation of cartilage can predict a number of observed phenomena in relation to the tissue’s equilibrium response to mechanical and osmotic loading, when flow-dependent and flow-independent viscoelastic effects have subsided. In particular, this model can predict the transition of Poisson’s ratio from very low values in compression (~0.02) to very high values in tension (~2.0). Most of these phenomena cannot be explained when using only three orthogonal fiber bundles to describe the tissue matrix, a common modeling assumption used to date. Conclusions The main picture emerging from this analysis is that the anisotropy of the fibrillar matrix of articular cartilage is intimately dependent on the mechanism of tensed fiber recruitment, in the manner suggested by our recent theoretical study (G. A. Ateshian. J Biomech Eng, 129(2):240-9, 2007).

Objective This study tests the hypothesis that the natural progression of osteoarthritis (OA) in human joints leads to an increase in the friction coefficient. This hypothesis is based on the expectation that the wear observed in OA may be exacerbated by higher friction coefficients. A corollary hypothesis is that healthy synovial fluid (SF) may help mitigate the increase in the friction coefficient in diseased joints. Design The friction coefficient of human tibiofemoral joints with varying degrees of OA was measured in healthy bovine SF and physiological buffered saline (PBS). Two testing configurations were adopted, one that promotes sustained cartilage interstitial fluid pressurization to investigate the effectiveness of this mechanism with advancing OA, and another that allows interstitial fluid pressure to subside to investigate the effectiveness of boundary lubrication. Results Eight specimens were visually staged to be normal or mildly degenerated (stages ≤2 on a scale of 1 to 4) and eight others had progressive degeneration (stages > 2 and ≤ 3). No statistical differences were found in the friction coefficient with increasing OA, whether in migrating or stationary contact area configurations; however, the friction coefficient was significantly lower in SF than PBS in both configurations. Conclusions The friction coefficient of human tibiofemoral cartilage does not necessarily increase with naturally increasing OA, for visual stages ranging from 1 to 3. This outcome may be explained by the fact that interstitial fluid pressurization is not necessarily defeated by advancing degeneration. This study also demonstrates that healthy synovial fluid decreases the friction coefficient of OA joints relative to PBS.

The objective of this study was to provide a detailed experimental assessment of the two-dimensional cartilage strain distribution on the cross-section of immature and mature bovine humeral heads subjected to contact loading at a relatively rapid physiological loading rate. Six immature and six mature humeral head specimens were loaded against glass and strains were measured at the end of a 5 s loading ramp on the textured articular cross-section using digital image correlation analysis. The primary findings indicate that elevated tensile and compressive strains occur near the articular surface, around the center of the contact region. Few qualitative or quantitative differences were observed between mature and immature joints. Under an average contact stress of ~1.7 MPa, the peak compressive strains averaged −0.131 ± 0.048, which was significantly less than the relative change in cartilage thickness, −0.104 ± 0.032 (p < 0.05). The peak tensile strains were significantly smaller in magnitude, at 0.0325 ± 0.013. These experimental findings differ from a previous finite element analysis of articular contact, which predicted peak strains at the cartilage-bone interface even when accounting for the porous-hydrated nature of the tissue, its depth-dependent inhomogeneity, and the disparity between its tensile and compressive properties. These experimental results yield new insights into the local mechanical environment of the tissue and cells, and suggest that further refinements are needed in the modeling of contacting articular layers.

Articular cartilage exhibits inhomogeneous, rate-dependent and tension-compression (TC) nonlinear material properties. It is a biphasic material (solid and fluid phases) and its solid phase is stiffer in tension than compression [1]. Despite this complex material behavior, elastic, incompressible material models can be used to predict the short-time loading response of cartilage [2]. To our knowledge, the use of an anisotropic incompressible material to represent cartilage in a finite element (FE) joint model has not been investigated and thus the importance of the TC nonlinearity in the analysis of 3D articular contact models is limited [3]. We have been investigating a TC nonlinear incompressible constitutive model to represent hip cartilage. The objective of this study was to assess the influence of TC nonlinearity on FE predictions of stress and strain as a function of congruency between two spherical cartilage layers. It was hypothesized that the TC nonlinear and neo-Hookean constitutive models would yield a similar response when the cartilage layers were nearly congruent, but as the congruency of the cartilage layers decreased the predicted response from the two materials would be different.