Meyer G A, McCulloch A D, Lieber R L
Department of Bioengineering, University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
J Biomech Eng. 2011 Sep;133(9):091007. doi: 10.1115/1.4004993.
The material properties of passive skeletal muscle are critical to proper function and are frequently a target for therapeutic and interventional strategies. Investigations into the passive viscoelasticity of muscle have primarily focused on characterizing the elastic behavior, largely neglecting the viscous component. However, viscosity is a sizeable contributor to muscle stress and extensibility during passive stretch and thus there is a need for characterization of the viscous as well as the elastic components of muscle viscoelasticity. Single mouse muscle fibers were subjected to incremental stress relaxation tests to characterize the dependence of passive muscle stress on time, strain and strain rate. A model was then developed to describe fiber viscoelasticity incorporating the observed nonlinearities. The results of this model were compared with two commonly used linear viscoelastic models in their ability to represent fiber stress relaxation and strain rate sensitivity. The viscous component of mouse muscle fiber stress was not linear as is typically assumed, but rather a more complex function of time, strain and strain rate. The model developed here, which incorporates these nonlinearities, was better able to represent the stress relaxation behavior of fibers under the conditions tested than commonly used models with linear viscosity. It presents a new tool to investigate the changes in muscle viscous stresses with age, injury and disuse.
被动骨骼肌的材料特性对其正常功能至关重要,并且常常是治疗和干预策略的目标。对肌肉被动粘弹性的研究主要集中在表征弹性行为上,很大程度上忽略了粘性成分。然而,在被动拉伸过程中,粘性对肌肉应力和伸展性有相当大的影响,因此需要对肌肉粘弹性的粘性和弹性成分进行表征。对单根小鼠肌肉纤维进行增量应力松弛试验,以表征被动肌肉应力对时间、应变和应变率的依赖性。然后开发了一个模型来描述包含观察到的非线性的纤维粘弹性。将该模型的结果与两个常用的线性粘弹性模型在表示纤维应力松弛和应变率敏感性的能力方面进行了比较。小鼠肌肉纤维应力的粘性成分并非如通常所假设的那样呈线性,而是时间、应变和应变率的更复杂函数。这里开发的包含这些非线性的模型,在测试条件下比具有线性粘性的常用模型更能代表纤维的应力松弛行为。它提供了一种新工具,用于研究随着年龄、损伤和废用而发生的肌肉粘性应力变化。