Evaluation of Apparent Fracture Toughness for Articular Cartilage and Hydrogels in Cartilage Tissue Engineering

摘要

Overall, a new method was developed to evaluate the failure properties of both articular cartilage and hydrogels. The apparent fracture toughness of hydrogels, even IPNs, was over an order of magnitude less than articular cartilage, so clearly there is much work to do in improving hydrogel fracture properties. Some factors such as the PEGDA concentration, molecular weight and cell inclusion may affect the apparent fracture toughness of hydrogels. Therefore, by providing standard testing methods that accommodate both hydrogels and cartilage, we have a clearer target for the extent by which we must improve the failure properties of hydrogels, which will ultimately lead to better tissue replacements for damaged articular cartilage.