Analytical and Experimental Study of the Creep Behavior of Intervertebral Disc Tissue Affected by Temperature

One of the most important and active body tissues during daily life is the intervertebral disc that not only sustains the applied loads to the spine but also it provides the required flexibility for doing different activities. This tissue as an important factor to carry applied loads to the body is always subjected to possible damages. Hence, due to the improvements in medical sciences in treatment or replacing these damaged tissues, investigating the mechanical behavior of the intervertebral disc and assessing the damage level is a major concern for the researchers. For this purpose, different tests should be carried out but to simulate the behavior of the disc more accurately, it is necessary to ensure that the test conditions are as close as possible to the real ones in the body. Hence, the aim of this research is to develop a set of creep constitutive equations that are based on the experimental investigation of the effect of temperature on the creep behavior of the intervertebral disc. To do this, compressive creep tests were carried out on the goat intervertebral disc tissue and the permeability and aggregate modulus were obtained based on fitting the biphasic constitutive equations with the experimental data. Statistical analyses of the experimental data reveal the significant effect of the temperature on the values of both material parameters and the creep behavior of the intervertebral disc, so that with increasing temperature permeability increases and aggregate modulus decreases or vice versa.