Research Highlights
My current research projects are :
Understanding the failure mechanisms in Hydrogels
Hydrogels are soft compliant materials that fail in a brittle manner. The development of tough hydrogels with high strength and fatigue resistance is a challenge for tissue engineering applications that also require the use of biocompatible materials. In this regard, hydrogels made of gelatin, which is derived from abundantly present protein fiber in our body named collagen, are promising scaffold material in tissue engineering applications. We hypothesized that increasing the crosslinks in gelatin hydrogels increases the elastic modulus and toughness. We cross-linked gelatin gels with methylglyoxal and used monotonic compression experiments to quantify the nonlinear stress-strain behaviors. To assess and compare the failure behaviors, we used Cavitation Rheology, Single Edge Notch Tests (SENT) and Pure Shear Notch tests. Our results show the importance of crosslinks in determining the elastic modulus and failure characteristics of gelatin gels.
Fig. : Cavitation in Gelatin hydrogel
Quantification of the role of collagen content and crosslinks between the collagen protein fibers in tissue mechanics.
We perform uniaxial tension tests and cavitation rheology tests on goat corneas to quantify the role of collagen protein in the mechanical and fracture response of these tissues. We intend to make a diseased model of the cornea and measure its fracture toughness using cavitation rheology and compare the results with those of control samples. In collaboration with a clinician, we plan to use cavitation rheology to quantify the efficacy of collagen crosslinking methods used in the treatment of keratoconus, a pathological condition of cornea, to quantify the toughness of corneal tissues that are crosslinked using different methods.
