Abstract
The indentation test has been widely used to evaluate mechanical properties of industrial and biological materials in many studies. In this study, we obtained an analytical solution of axisymmetric contact problem of viscoelastic layer bonded on rigid substrate indented by flat-ended cylindrical punch using elastic-viscoelastic corresponding principle. The relaxation indentation tests were conducted for silicon rubber, Echo PAD which is a soft material used for elastography, and articular cartilage of bovine femoral head. For articular cartilage, fresh articular cartilage was treated by collagenase after a relaxation indentation test and was then used again in same test. The viscoelastic models in this study were selected as three-element model (standard linear solid model) and five-element model (generalized Maxwell model) and viscoelastic parameters of the models were determined by fitting the analytical solution to applied load varying with time collected from the relaxation indentation test. As the results, it was suggested that the five-element model was more appropriate than three-element model to reproduce the behavior of relaxation indentation of silicon rubber, Echo PAD, and articular cartilage. Furthermore, the viscoelastic parameters of treated articular cartilage decreased sufficiently compared with those of fresh articular cartilage. From these results, it was suggested that the method of evaluating the time-dependent mechanical properties of articular cartilage based on the analytical solutions of the relaxation indentation test obtained from this study could be a useful tool for evaluating the state of degenerated cartilage.
