BackgroundThe highly organized structure and composition of the annulus fibrosus provides the tissue with mechanical behaviors that include anisotropy and nonlinearity. Mathematical models are necessary to interpret and elucidate the meaning of directly measured mechanical properties, to understand the structure-function relationships of the tissue components, namely the fibers and extrafibrillar matrix. This study models the annulus fibrosus as a combination of strain energy functions describing the fibers, matrix, and their interactions. The objective was to quantify the behavior of both nondegenerate and degenerate annulus fibrosus tissue using uniaxial tensile experimental data.
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