Time-dependent rheological behaviour of bacterial cellulose hydrogel.

This work focuses on time-dependent rheological behaviour of bacterial cellulose (BC) hydrogel. Due to its ideal biocompatibility, BC hydrogel could be employed in biomedical applications. Considering the complexity of loading conditions in human body environment, time-dependent behaviour under relevant conditions should be understood. BC specimens are produced by Gluconacetobacter xylinus ATCC 53582 at static-culture conditions. Time-dependent behaviour of specimens at several stress levels is experimentally determined by uniaxial tensile creep tests. We use fraction-exponential operators to model the rheological behaviour. Such a representation allows combination of good accuracy in analytical description of viscoelastic behaviour of real materials and simplicity in solving boundary value problems. The obtained material parameters allow us to identify time-dependent behaviour of BC hydrogel at high stress level with sufficient accuracy.