A Simplified Strain Energy Function to Represent the Mechanical Behavior of the Annulus Fibrosus

Models to represent the mechanical behavior of the annulus fibrosus are important tools to understand the biomechanics of the spine. Many hyperelastic constitutive equations have been proposed to simulate the mechanical behavior of the annulus that incorporate the anisotropic nature of the tissue. Recent approaches [1,2] have included terms into the energy function which take into account fiber-fiber and fiber-matrix interactions, leading to complex functions that cannot be readily implemented into commercial finite element codes for an efficient simulation of nonlinear realistic models of the spine (which are generally composed of 100,000+ degrees of freedom). An effort is undertaken here to test the capability of a relatively simple strain energy function [3] for the description of the annulus fibrosus. This function has already been shown to successfully represent the mechanical behavior of the arterial tissue and can be readily implemented into existing finite element codes.