Compressive strain, articular cartilage

In this study, a 5% confined compression test was carried out numerically. 5 % compression was chosen as the purpose of this study was to understand why articular cartilage chondrocytes may die when exposed to impact loading but survive when exposed to muscular loading of similar magnitude. Therefore, the strain magnitude was chosen very small so that it should not be injurious by itself. Previous experimental studies showed that 5% compression applied to cartilage tissue in 0.3s resulted in cell death in the superficial zone [7]. This made the 5% compression a reasonable choice for the current study. 

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