Issue 16, 2019

Image-based analysis of uniaxial ring test for mechanical characterization of soft materials and biological tissues

Abstract

Uniaxial ring test is a widely used mechanical characterization method for a variety of materials, from industrial elastomers to biological materials. Here we show that the combination of local material compression, bending, and stretching during uniaxial ring test results in a geometry-dependent deformation profile that can introduce systematic errors in the extraction of mechanical parameters. We identify the stress and strain regimes under which stretching dominates and develop a simple image-based analysis approach that eliminates these systematic errors. We rigorously test this approach computationally and experimentally, and demonstrate that we can accurately estimate the sample mechanical properties for a wide range of ring geometries. As a proof of concept for its application, we use the approach to analyze explanted rat vascular tissues and find a clear temporal change in the mechanical properties of these explants after graft implantation. The image-based approach can therefore offer a straightforward, versatile, and accurate method for mechanically characterizing new classes of soft and biological materials.

Graphical abstract: Image-based analysis of uniaxial ring test for mechanical characterization of soft materials and biological tissues

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
16 Nov 2018
Accepted
15 Mar 2019
First published
25 Mar 2019
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Soft Matter, 2019,15, 3353-3361

Image-based analysis of uniaxial ring test for mechanical characterization of soft materials and biological tissues

E. E. van Haaften, M. C. van Turnhout and N. A. Kurniawan, Soft Matter, 2019, 15, 3353 DOI: 10.1039/C8SM02343C

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements