Anisotropic and viscoelastic tensile mechanical properties of aponeurosis: Experimentation, modeling, and tissue microstructure.

Aponeuroses are stiff sheath-like components of the muscle-tendon unit that play a vital role in force transmission and thus locomotion. There is clear importance of the aponeurosis in musculoskeletal function, but there have been relatively few studies of aponeurosis material properties to date. The goals of this work were to: 1) perform tensile stress-relaxation tests, 2) perform planar biaxial tests, 3) employ computational modeling to the data from 1 to 2, and 4) perform scanning electron microscopy to determine collagen fibril organization for aponeurosis tissue.