Anisotropic Properties of the Anterior
Cruciate Ligament: Tensile Testing
Name: Ashwin Nathan
Class: BE 210
The central hypothesis of the experiment is that the tensile elastic modulus of
the ACL will be significantly higher in the longitudinal direction (0° from the
fiber direction) than in the transverse direction (90° from the fiber
direction).
In addition, there will be several goals in this experiment. First and foremost, the concepts involved in mechanical properties will be studied. The ideas of anisotropy and isotropy will be considered, and their involvement in the mechanical properties of tissue will be of importance. In addition, the fundamental material properties of stress and strain will be related to the tensile testing that will be performed on the Instron.
MATLAB will be utilized to determine the elastic modulus of the ACL when loaded in the two different directions. From the force-displacement curve that is initially returned from the Instron and the LabView software package, as well as the initial geometry of the samples, a written program will calculate the elastic modulus, or slope of the linear portion of the curve.
With a more in depth understanding of the mechanical properties of the ACL, better constructs can be engineered to replace damaged ligaments in athletes who have torn their ACL