Mechanical Characterization of the Soft Tissues of a Native Human Knee： A Pilot Study

作     者：Silvia Pianigiani Stephane Godet Loic Malet Luc Labey De Corte Ronny Walter Pascale Bernardo Innocenti 

作者机构：IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi Milano Italy 4MAT Universite Libre de Bruxelles Bruxelles Belgium KU Leuven Biomeehanics Section Leuven Belgium Smith&Nephew Zaventem Belgium BEAMS Department Universite Libre de Bruxelles Bruxelles Belgium 

出 版 物：《Journal of Sports Science》 (运动科学（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2014年第2卷第4期

页      面：173-180页

学科分类：0403[教育学-体育学] 04[教育学] 

主　　题：Collateral ligaments cruciate ligaments human knee tissue mechanical characterization force-displacement curve. 

摘      要：The importance of ligaments in providing joint stability and the incidence of injuries, dictates a need to increase their structural and mechanical properties understanding. Additionally, one of the challenges in the orthopedic industry is to design TKA （total knee arthroplasty） aiming to be soft-tissues friendly. This requires a priori knowledge of physiological knee function, in which the passive stability is achieved and guaranteed by the complex envelope of soft tissues around the joint. Therefore, the knowledge of the mechanical behavior of knee ligaments is fundamental. For this reason, our study aims to define and apply in a pilot study, an ad-hoc methodology to mechanically characterize ligaments of native human knees. The cruciate and collateral ligaments from a fresh frozen cadaver leg were accurately harvested. Each ligament was independently tested during a tensile test at different strain rates, simulating different deformation speeds during gait. Moreover, additional tensile tests until failure were also performed. Axial force and deformation were continuously recorded during each test. Results show that each ligament exhibited own typical non-linear, speed-related behavior. High repeatability in the results is observed among the different repeated tests confirming the robustness of the used methodology. This information will be helpful for clinicians, engineers and researchers to improve the biomechanical knowledge about knee, to develop better implants and to be able to improve the currently available numerical models of the human knee.