Experimental verification and theoretical prediction of cartilage interstitial fluid pressurization at an impermeable contact interface in confined compression.

Interstitial fluid pressurization has long been hypothesized to play a fundamental role in the load support mechanism and frictional response of articular cartilage. However, to date, few experimental studies have been performed to verify this hypothesis from direct measurements. The first objective of this study was to investigate experimentally the hypothesis that cartilage interstitial fluid pressurization does support the great majority of the applied load, in the testing configurations of confined compression creep and stress relaxation. The second objective was to investigate the hypothesis that the experimentally observed interstitial fluid pressurization could also be predicted using the linear biphasic theory of Mow et al. (J. Biomech. Engng ASME, 102, 73-84, 1980). Fourteen bovine cartilage samples were tested in a confined compression chamber fitted with a microchip piezoresistive transducer to measure interstitial fluid pressure, while simultaneously measuring (during stress relaxation) or prescribing (during creep) the total stress. It was found that interstitial fluid pressure supported more than 90% of the total stress for durations as long as 725 +/- 248 s during stress relaxation (mean +/- S.D., n = 7), and 404 +/- 229 s during creep (n = 7). When comparing experimental measurements of the time-varying interstitial fluid pressure against predictions from the linear biphasic theory, nonlinear coefficients of determination r2 = 0.871 +/- 0.086 (stress relaxation) and r2 = 0.941 +/- 0.061 (creep) were found. The results of this study provide some of the most direct evidence to date that interstitial fluid pressurization plays a fundamental role in cartilage mechanics; they also indicate that the mechanism of fluid load support in cartilage can be properly predicted from theory.