Validation of Triphasic Mixture Theory for a Mimic of Intervertebral Disk Tissue

This paper describes experimental studies an synthetic madel materials that mimic the mechanical behavior af intervertebral disk tissue. The results are used ta validate the triphasic mixture theory to describe soft charged hydrated materiais. Permeability and swelling pressure experiments were used to determine a number of independent material parameters. Confined swelling and compression studies were used to study the transient behavior due to chemical and mechanical loading. It appeared that the synthetic materials exhibit hydraulic permeability, ion diffusivity, and swelling characteristics similar to those of disk tissue. Moreover, the triphasic theory af Snijders (1995) describes the transient behavior of this type of synthetic material. However, this led to rather high values of the diffusion coefficient for the ions. This has to be investigated more thoroughly in the near future.