Osteoarthritis is a serious problem which affects many people. To be able to treat those who suffer from osteoarthritis, the mechanism behind the degeneration of articular cartilage must be fully understood. In order to relate the nanoscale structural realities with the macroscale mechanical properties of degenerating articular cartilage, a computational model is required.

During a recent study, Bilton et al. (2018) produced a computational fibre-network model to assimilate the experimental data obtained by Nickien et al. (2017). Although the computational network generated by the model followed the same inverse relationship between swelling potential and transverse stiffness with varying crosslink density, the limiting stiffness present in the experimental data was absent in the computational model (as seen to the left). Instead, the computational model decayed to 0 MPa.

The decrease in interconnectivity observed during the initial stages of cartilage degeneration was modelling by Bilton et al. (2018) as changes in crosslink density. Bilton et al. (2018) concluded in their study that the absence of the limiting stiffness arose from the absence of re-aggregation factored in the model.

The aim is to expand on the existing model created by Bilton et al. (2018) to more closely mimic the trends observed in Nickien et al.’s (2017) experimental data. By changing the network geometry of the model, the goal is to produce a network which exhibits the limiting stiffness present in the experimental data.