Experimental Characterization of the Human Meniscal Tissue

The meniscus plays a critical role in load transmission, stability and energy dissipation in the knee joint. Loss of the meniscus leads to joint degeneration and osteoarthritis. In a number of cases replacement of the resected meniscal tissue by a synthetic implant might avoid the articular cartilage degeneration. None of the available implants presents optimal biomechanics characteristic due to the fact the biomechanics functionality of the meniscus is not yet fully understood. Mimicking the native biomechanical characteristics of the menisci seems to be the key factor in meniscus replacement functioning. This is extremely challenging due to its complex inhomogeneous microstructure, the lack of a full experimental characterization of the material properties and the lack of 3D theoretical, numerical and computational models which can reproduce and validate the experimental results. The objective of this work is to present the experimental characterization of the anisotropic meniscal tissue at the macroscale. Innovative Biaxial tests have been conducted and the results are new to the literature.