Investigations of Sliding-Induced Solute Transport in Articular Cartilage

Solute transport has not been studied in articular cartilage subject to sliding loads, as occurs in vivo. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive investigation of solute transport under sliding loads specifically investigating enhancement to mass transfer and spatiotemporal changes to diffusivity within the tissue. The findings are contextualized by supplemental investigations comparing the results to commonly studied loading modes such as uniaxial compression, elucidating the role of the superficial region as a barrier to load induced solute transport, and the accuracy of nutrient diffusion models (single vs multi-layer) for characterizing diffusivity. This study demonstrates that mass transfer is higher for sliding compared to uniaxial compression reaching 4.4-fold at 2 hrs (p=0.002) and this can exceed the passive capacity of the tissue. In addition, this work demonstrates a spatiotemporal dependence of diffusivity within the tissue under sliding loads.