Artificial cornea research at Northwestern University Artificial corneas or keratoprostheses are designed to replace diseased or damaged cornea in the event that vision cannot be restored using donor cornea tissue. When developing new devices, the developer needs to prove that the materials used are biocompatible, optically transparent, and mechanically strong enough to maintain their structure in the ocular environment. The tensile and fatigue strengths of candidate materials were tested at Northwestern University using a TestResources dynamic test machine, or biomedical fatigue tester. Testing included material properties such as elastic modulus, ultimate tensile strength, and strain at rupture. Elastic modulus was measured in the elastic or linear region of the stress versus strain plot. Ultimate tensile strength is the maximum stress response of the material during tensile testing. Strain at rupture is simply the elongation of the sample at the point of rupture. In this study, the elongation was reported as a percentage of the original length of the sample. Learn more: Artificial cornea research at Northwestern University and University of Illinois
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