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Non-contact tensile viscoelastic characterization of microscale biological materials

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Abstract

Many structures and materials in nature and physiology have important “meso-scale” structures at the micron length-scale whose tensile responses have proven difficult to characterize mechanically. Although techniques such as atomic force microscopy and micro- and nano-identation are mature for compression and indentation testing at the nano-scale, and standard uniaxial and shear rheometry techniques exist for the macroscale, few techniques are applicable for tensile-testing at the micrometre-scale, leaving a gap in our understanding of hierarchical biomaterials. Here, we present a novel magnetic mechanical testing (MMT) system that enables viscoelastic tensile testing at this critical length scale. The MMT system applies non-contact loading, avoiding gripping and surface interaction effects. We demonstrate application of the MMT system to the first analyses of the pure tensile responses of several native and engineered tissue systems at the mesoscale, showing the broad potential of the system for exploring micro- and meso-scale analysis of structured and hierarchical biological systems.

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Acknowledgements

This project was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 11532009, 11372243, and 11522219) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant 2016M602810). This project was also supported by the Initiative Postdocs Supporting Program (Grant BX201600121).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Yuhui Li, Yuan Hong, Qiang Shi, Deding Tang, Guy M. Genin & Feng Xu

  2. Biomedical Engineering and Biomechanics Center (BEBC), Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Yuhui Li, Yuan Hong, Shaobao Liu, Qiang Shi, Deding Tang, Guy M. Genin, Tian Jian Lu & Feng Xu

  3. International Center for Applied Mechanics, State Key Laboratory for Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Guang-Kui Xu

  4. School of Life Sciences, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China

    Hui Yang

  5. The NSF Science and Technology Center for Engineering Mechano-Biology, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO, 63130, USA

    Guy M. Genin

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  1. Yuhui Li
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  2. Yuan Hong
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  3. Guang-Kui Xu
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  4. Shaobao Liu
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  5. Qiang Shi
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  6. Deding Tang
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  7. Hui Yang
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  8. Guy M. Genin
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  9. Tian Jian Lu
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  10. Feng Xu
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Correspondence to Tian Jian Lu or Feng Xu.

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Li, Y., Hong, Y., Xu, GK. et al. Non-contact tensile viscoelastic characterization of microscale biological materials. Acta Mech. Sin. 34, 589–599 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-017-0740-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-017-0740-1

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