Quantification of Interfibrillar Shear Stress in Aligned Soft Collagenous Tissues via Notch Tension Testing.

ABSTRACT: The mechanical function of soft collagenous tissues is largely determined by their hierarchical organization of collagen molecules. While collagen fibrils are believed to be discontinuous and transfer load through shearing of the interfibrillar matrix, interfibrillar shear stresses have never been quantified. Scaling traditional shear testing procedures down to the fibrillar length scale is impractical and would introduce substantial artifacts. Here, through the use of a novel microscopic variation of notch tension testing, we explicitly demonstrate the existence of interfibrillar shear stresses within tendon fascicles and provide the first measurement of their magnitude. Axial stress gradients along the sample length generated by notch tension testing were measured and used to calculate a

SUBMITTER: Szczesny SE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4606738 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature