The effects of pre-indenting load on mechanical response of bovine meniscus

Indentation test has been accepted as one of the most effective and simple implemented methodologies for mechanical characterization of the different biological tissues. However, there are different challenges in practical implementation of indentation test. Tissue preconditioning is a kind of experimental difficulties which can influence the characterization results considerably. In other words, there is no explicit expression for different preconditioning phenomena such as dynamic loading, loading rate and loading depth in an indentation test. However, indentation test benefits cause to absorb the attention of several research groups with different study fields. This paper presents a structural study to investigate the effect of preload on mechanical characteristics of meniscus tissue. In this regard, bovine medial meniscus sample has been modelled based on meniscus internal structure. Flat punch indentation tests conducted on meniscus samples considering different values for pre-indenting force. The experiments procedures are simulated based on an axisymmetric finite element model. In order to obtain constitutive parameters, the experimental data fitted to proposed constitutive model.