Mechanical characteristics of spinal cord tissue by indentation
Oskar Neumann, Harsh Vardhan Surana, Stephen Kirwa Melly, Paul Steinmann, Silvia Budday
Abstract
=46.10s for white matter, while the initial peak force decreased by 54 % for grey and 59 % for white matter tissue. An increase of the applied loading rate by two orders of magnitude led to an approximate doubling of the apparent modulus for both tissue types. Thermal variations showed a decrease in apparent modulus of up to 30 % after heating from 20 to 37.0 °C. Our dynamic tests revealed a significant influence of cyclic preload on the stiffness, with a drop of up to 20 % and a relative decrease of up to 60 % after the first cycle compared to the total modulus drop after five cycles for spinal cord grey matter tissue. Oscillatory indentation experiments identified similar loss moduli for spinal cord grey and white matter tissue and a higher storage modulus for white matter tissue. This work provides systematic insights into the mechanical properties of spinal cord tissue under different loading scenarios using nanoindentation.