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Abstract:This review is intended to highlight and discuss the various experimental techniques used to obtain the mechanical behavior of soft tissues at varying strain rates. A variety of techniques used to obtain the mechanical properties of soft tissues and soft materials from low to intermediate and high rates of strain are summarized. These techniques include quasi-static, intermediate and dynamic strain rate setups. Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) technique with some modifications is commonly used for testing soft materials at high strain rates up to 10 4 s -1 . Article searches were performed on impact biomechanics, orthopaedic and biomechanical publications in databases: PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Compendex, MEDLINE and EMBASE. The discrepancies on the use of conventional SHPB in the dynamic soft tissues testing were highlighted. This review explains the use of conventional SHPB technique for the characterization of soft tissues under compressive and tensile loading. The discrepancies in existing literature emphasize the need for additional research into the development of SHPB for dynamic testing of soft tissues under both compressive and tensile loading. This review suggests requirement of an integrated SHPB setup with necessary modifications in striker bar loading mechanism and specimen clamping attachment for dynamic testing of soft tissues under compressive as well as tensile loading.

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The characterization of soft tissues subjected to higher compressive strain rates is of increasing importance as the material properties of soft tissues were commonly used in impact applications such as automotive safety and crashworthiness for biofidible numerical modeling of the human body. Due to less availability of stain rate dependent data in the open literature and various challenges in the characterisation of soft tissues under impacts, need were felt for characterisation of soft tissues at higher strain rates. The purpose of this study is to investigate the dynamic mechanical behavior of soft tissues at varying compressive strain-rates. The viscoelastic split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) is designed and developed to predict the high rate compressive behavior of soft tissues. The primary benefit in using viscoelastic bars is the reduced bar impedance allowing for high-quality measurements of the transmitted and reflected stress wave signals. The dynamic behavior of goat muscles has been measured at higher strain rates ~500-1200 s-1 using a polymeric SHPB apparatus. The dynamic stress-strain response of muscle tissue exhibits non-linear behavior under compressive loadings and is strain-rate dependent.