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 the porous materials over a range of frequencies, and the force measuring device is adapted to measure a mechanical response of the porous materials, wherein the actuator is configured to apply the displacement to the porous materials through a first nonslip surface, the system configured to hold the porous materials on a second nonslip surface;
• at least one processor coupled to drive the actuator to apply the displacement to the porous materials and to read the mechanical response of the porous materials, the at least one processor also being configured to execute machine-readable instructions of a poroelastic material model recorded in a memory;
• the memory also containing limits;
• the memory further containing machine-readable instructions which are implemented on the at least one processor, to cause the at least one processor to perform a convergence procedure configured to determine parameters for the poroelastic material model such that the porous material model, when executed using the determined parameters to simulate a mechanical response, produces an estimated porous materials response that matches the measured mechanical response of the porous materials to within the limits.