Triphasic Theory for Swelling Properties of Hydrated Charged Soft Biological Tissues

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Abstract
Swelling phenomenon of biological soft tissues, such as articular cartilage, depends on their fixed charge densities, the stiffness of their collagen-proteoglycan solid matrix and the ion concentration in the interstitium. Based on the thermodynamic continuum mixture theory, a multiphasic mixture model is developed to describe the equilibrium and transient swelling properties. For articular cartilages in a single salt environment (e.g. NaCl), a three phase model (triphasic theory) suffices to describe its swelling behavior. The three phases are: solid matrix, interstitial water and the mobile salt. The equations of motion in this theory shows that the driving forces for interstitial water and salt are the gradients of their chemical potentials. Constitutive equations for the chemical potentials of the phases and for the total stress under infinitesimal strain but large variation of salt concentration are presented based on the physico-chemical theory for polyelectrolytic solutions and continuum theory. Application of this theory to equilibrium problems yields the well known Donnan equilibrium ion distribution and osmotic pressure equations. The theory indicates that at equilibrium the applied load on the tissue is shared by 1) the solid matrix elastic stress due to deformation; 2) the Donnan osmotic pressure; and 3) the chemical expansion stress due to the charge-to-charge repulsive forces between the charged groups in the solid matrix. For the transient isometric swelling problem, the theory is shown to describe the experimentally observed responses very well.

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