Frictional behaviour of bovine articular cartilage

The experimentally measured indentation displacement and friction of normal and degraded (treated with chondroitinase AC) bovine articular cartilage plugs against a smooth steel plate were compared with the predictions based on the biphasic theory using the finite element method. It was found that the measured indentation displacement of both cartilage specimens could be predicted from the biphasic theory and the permeability for the degraded cartilage specimen was increased approximately three times. However, the measured friction coefficient was much lower for short period of loading, and the difference in the finite element prediction of friction coefficient between the normal and degraded cartilage specimens was not observed in the experiment. Therefore, it was concluded that both biphasic and other mechanisms were important in controlling the frictional and lubricating characteristics of articular cartilage in mixed and boundary lubrication regimes.