A Mechanical Model for Mammalian Tendon

Abstract

A theoretical model is proposed to describe the mechanical behavior of mammalian tendon. The tendon is modeled as an incompressible fiber-reinforced composite with continuously distributed inextensible fibers. The fibers describe helices with constant pitch on concentric right circular cylinders. The analysis is, essentially, independent of the material behavior and, for example, applies to nonlinear elastic solids and viscoelastic materials. A boundary-value problem for tendon extension is discussed in detail and, for a particular nonlinear elastic solid, the deformation and stress are determined to be in qualitative agreement with existing experimental results.