1. Characterisation and modelling of continuous electrospun poly(ɛ- caprolactone) filaments for biological tissue repair.
- Author
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Ferreira TZ, Pan Z, Mouthuy PA, and Brassart L
- Subjects
- Mechanical Phenomena, Tensile Strength, Elasticity, Biocompatible Materials chemistry, Tissue Scaffolds chemistry, Viscosity, Stress, Mechanical, Mechanical Tests, Tissue Engineering, Electricity, Polyesters chemistry, Materials Testing
- Abstract
This study investigates the mechanical behaviour of poly(ɛ-caprolactone) (PCL) continuous filaments produced by a novel electrospinning (ES) method. These filaments can be processed into woven or braided structures, showing great promises as scaffolds for ligament and tendon repair. Mechanical characterisation of the filaments using DMA and uniaxial tensile tests shows that the filament response is viscoelastic-viscoplastic. Filaments tested using bollard grips present an initially linear elastic response, followed by plastic yielding with two-stage hardening. The filaments are highly stretchable, reaching more than 1000% strain. The different deformation stages are correlated to the evolution of the micro-fibre network observed using SEM, involving the untangling, alignment and stretching of the fibres. A large deformation viscoelastic-viscoplastic model is proposed, which successfully captures the mechanical response of the filaments under non-monotonic loading conditions. Our study also highlights the sensitivity of the measured mechanical response to the type of mechanical grips, namely bollard or screw-side grips., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy holds patent #WO20150403999A1 related to the filament fabrication technology. The other authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)
- Published
- 2025
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