Poroelastic dynamic mechanical analyzer for determining mechanical properties of biological materials.

A system for determining poroelastic mechanical properties of porous materials comprising:

• A dynamic mechanical analyzer comprising an actuator and a force measuring device, the actuator adapted to apply a displacement in a first axis to a material over a range of frequencies, and the force measuring device adapted to monitor a mechanical response of the material;
• A processor coupled to drive the actuator and to read the mechanical response, the processor coupled to execute machine-readable instructions of a poroelastic material model recorded in a memory;
• The memory also containing limits;
• The memory containing machine-readable instructions of a convergence procedure for determining parameters for the poroelastic model such that the model estimates the material response to within the limits.