Abstract
A convenient technique is reported in this note for measuring elastic modulus of extremely soft material for cellular adhesion. Specimens of bending cylinder under gravity are used to avoid contact problem between testing device and sample, and a beam model is presented for evaluating the curvatures of gel beams with large elastic deformation. A self-adaptive algorithm is also proposed to search for the best estimation of gels’ elastic moduli by comparing the experimental bending curvatures with those computed from the beam model with preestimated moduli. Application to the measurement of the property of polyacrylamide gels indicates that the material compliance varies with the concentrations of bis-acrylamide, and the gels become softer after being immersed in a culture medium for a period of time, no matter to what extent they are polymerized.
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The project supported by the National Basic Research Program (2007CB935602), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (90607004, 10672005).
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Peng, X., Huang, J., Qin, L. et al. A method to determine Young’s modulus of soft gels for cell adhesion. Acta Mech Sin 25, 565–570 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-009-0270-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-009-0270-6