Stress relaxation and recovery in tendon and ligament: experiment and modeling.

Accurate joint models require the ability to predict soft tissue behavior. This study evaluates the ability of constitutive equations to predict the nonlinear and viscoelastic behavior of tendon and ligament during stress relaxation testing in a porcine model. Three constitutive equations are compared in their ability to model relaxation, recovery and reloading of tissues.

Viscoelastic relaxation and recovery of tendon.

Tendons exhibit complex viscoelastic behaviors during relaxation and recovery. Recovery is critical to predicting behavior in subsequent loading, yet is not well studied. Our goal is to explore time-dependent recovery of these tendons after loading.