| Collagen is a key constituent for a large number of biological materials including bone, tendon, cartilage, skin and fish scales. Understanding the mechanical behavior of collagen's microscale structural components (fibers and fibrils) is therefore of utmost importance for fields such as biomimetics and biomedical engineering. However, the mechanics of collagen fibers and fibrils remain largely unexplored. The main research challenges are the small sample sizes (diameters less than 1 im) and the need to maintain physiologically relevant conditions. In this work, a microscale mechanical testing device (MMTD) capable of measuring the stress-strain response of individual collagen fibers and fibrils was developed. The MMTD consists of: (i) a transducer from a commercial nanoindenter to measure load and displacement, (ii) an optical microscope to observe the deformation of the sample in-situ and (iii) micromanipulators to isolate, position and fix samples. Collagen fibers and fibrils were extracted from fish scales using a novel dissection procedure and tested using the MMTD. A variety of tensile tests were performed including monotonic loading and cyclic tests with increasing loading rate or maximum displacement. The monotonic test results found that the elastic modulus, ultimate tensile strength and strain at failure range from 0.5 to 1.3 GPa, 100 to 200 MPa and 20% to 60%, respectively. The cyclic tests revealed that the largest increase in damage accumulation occurs at strains between 10% and 20%, when hydrogen bonds at the molecular level are ruptured. Further straining the fibril causes little additional damage accumulation and signals the approach of failure. The addition of water is shown to increase damage tolerance and strain to failure. |
