Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Publication
    Mechanical characterization of the P56 mouse brain under large-deformation dynamic indentation
    The brain is a complex organ made up of many different functional and structural regions consisting of different types of cells such as neurons and glia, as well as complex anatomical geometries. It is hypothesized that the different regions of the brain exhibit significantly different mechanical properties, which may be attributed to the diversity of cells and anisotropy of neuronal fibers within individual brain regions. The regional dynamic mechanical properties of P56 mouse brain tissue in vitro and in situ at velocities of 0.71-4.28 mm/s, up to a deformation of 70 μm are presented and discussed in the context of traumatic brain injury. The experimental data obtained from micro-indentation measurements were fit to three hyperelastic material models using the inverse Finite Element method. The cerebral cortex elicited a stiffer response than the cerebellum, thalamus, and medulla oblongata regions for all velocities. The thalamus was found to be the least sensitive to changes in velocity, and the medulla oblongata was most compliant. The results show that different regions of the mouse brain possess significantly different mechanical properties, and a significant difference also exists between the in vitro and in situ brain.
      276Scopus© Citations 37
  • Publication
    A Delay Vector Variance based Marker for an Output-Only Assessment of Structural Changes in Tension Leg Platforms
    Although aspects of power generation of many offshore renewable devices are well understood, their dynamic responses under high wind and wave conditions are still to be investigated to a great detail. Output only statistical markers are important for these offshore devices, since access to the device is limited and information about the exposure conditions and the true behaviour of the devices are generally partial, limited, and vague or even absent. The markers can summarise and characterise the behaviour of these devices from their dynamic response available as time series data. The behaviour may be linear or nonlinear and consequently a marker that can track the changes in structural situations can be quite important. These markers can then be helpful in assessing the current condition of the structure and can indicate possible intervention, monitoring or assessment. This paper considers a Delay Vector Variance based marker for changes in a tension leg platform tested in an ocean wave basin for structural changes brought about by single column dampers. The approach is based on dynamic outputs of the device alone and is based on the estimation of the nonlinearity of the output signal. The advantages of the selected marker and its response with changing structural properties are discussed. The marker is observed to be important for monitoring the as- deployed structural condition and is sensitive to changes in such conditions. Influence of exposure conditions of wave loading is also discussed in this study based only on experimental data.
      265Scopus© Citations 2
  • Publication
    Dynamic mechanical properties of murine brain tissue using micro-indentation
    Significant advances have been made in recent decades to determine the macro-scale properties of brain tissue in compression, tension, shear and indentation. There has also been significant work done at the nanoscale using the AFM method to characterise the properties of individual neurons. However, there has been little published work on the micro-scale properties of brain tissue using an appropriate indentation methodology to characterise regional differences at dynamic strain rates. This paper presents a novel micro-indentation device that has been developed and used to measure the dynamic mechanical properties of brain tissue. The device is capable of applying up to 30/s strain rates with a maximum indentation area of 1500μm^2. Indentation tests were carried out to determine the shear modulus of the cerebellum (3.59±1.27 kPa) and cortex (7.05±3.92 kPa) of murine brain tissue at 30/s up to 14% strain. Numerical simulations were carried out to verify the experimentally measured force-displacement results.
      601Scopus© Citations 33
  • Publication
    Extreme softness of brain matter in simple shear
    We show that porcine brain matter can be modelled accurately as a very soft rubber-like material using the Mooney–Rivlin strain energy function, up to strains as high as 60%. This result followed from simple shear experiments performed on small rectangular fresh samples (2.5 cm3 and 1.1 cm3) at quasi-static strain rates. They revealed a linear shear stress–shear strain relationship (R2>0.97), characteristic of Mooney–Rivlin materials at large strains. We found that porcine brain matter is about 30 times less resistant to shear forces than a silicone gel. We also verified experimentally that brain matter exhibits the positive Poynting effect of non-linear elasticity, and numerically that the stress and strain fields remain mostly homogeneous throughout the thickness of the samples in simple shear.
    Scopus© Citations 64  591
  • Publication
    Modelling the slight compressibility of anisotropic soft tissue
    In order to avoid the numerical difficulties in locally enforcing the incompressibility constraint using the displacement formulation of the Finite Element Method, slight compressibility is typically assumed when simulating transversely isotropic, soft tissue. The current standard method of accounting for slight compressibility of hyperelastic soft tissue assumes an additive decomposition of the strain-energy function into a volumetric and a deviatoric part. This has been shown, however, to be inconsistent with the linear theory for anisotropic materials. It is further shown here that, under hydrostatic tension or compression, a transversely isotropic cube modelled using this additive split is simply deformed into another cube regardless of the size of the deformation, in contravention of the physics of the problem. A remedy for these defects is proposed here: the trace of the Cauchy stress is assumed linear in both volume change and fibre stretch. The general form of the strain-energy function consistent with this model is obtained and is shown to be a generalisation of the current standard model. A specific example is used to clearly demonstrate the differences in behaviour between the two models in hydrostatic tension and compression.
      473Scopus© Citations 21
  • Publication
    Generalisations of the strain-energy function of linear elasticity to model biological soft tissue
    Strain measures consistent with the classical, infinitesimal form of the strain-energy function are obtained within the context of isotropic, homogeneous, compressible, non-linear elasticity. It will be shown that there are two distinct families of such measures. One family has already been much studied in the literature, the most important member being the strains whose principal values are a function only of the corresponding principal stretches. The second family of strains appears new. The motivation for studying such strains is the intuitive expectation that, for at least moderate deformations, a good fit with experimental data from material characterisation tests will be obtained with the corresponding strain-energy functions. In particular, there is the expectation that such models could prove useful for the modelling of biological soft tissue, whose physiological response is characterised by moderate strains. It will be shown that this is indeed the case for simple tension tests on porcine brain tissue.
    Scopus© Citations 13  646
  • Publication
    Quasi-static deformations of biological soft tissue
    Quasi-static motions are motions for which inertial effects can be neglected, to the first order of approximation. It is crucial to be able to identify the quasi-static regime in order to efficiently formulate constitutive models from standard material characterization test data. A simple non-dimensionalization of the equations of motion for continuous bodies yields non-dimensional parameters which indicate the balance between inertial and material effects. It will be shown that these parameters depend on whether the characterization test is strain- or stress-controlled and on the constitutive model assumed. A rigorous definition of quasi-static behaviour for both strain- and stress-controlled experiments is obtained for elastic solids and a simple form of a viscoelastic solid. Adding a rate dependence to a constitutive model introduces internal time-scales and this complicates the identification of the quasi-static regime. This is especially relevant for biological soft tissue as this tissue is typically mod as being a non-linearly viscoelastic solid. The results obtained here are applied to some problems in cardiac mechanics and to data obtained from simple shear experiments on porcine brain tissue at high strain rates.
    Scopus© Citations 14  437