The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Spinning of collagen fibers and characterizing thermal, mechanical, tensile and structural properties
Author:	Tatagiri, Grace Evangelin
View Online:	njit-etd2004-074 (x, 83 pages ~ 6.4 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Biomedical Engineering
Degree:	Master of Science
Program:	Biomedical Engineering
Document Type:	Thesis
Advisory Committee:	Jaffe, Michael (Committee chair) Arinzeh, Treena Livingston (Committee member) Collins, George (Committee member)
Date:	2004-05
Keywords:	Spinning collagen fibers Dispersion Bovine tendon
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	Collagen is the most important building block in the entire animal world. It plays an important role in regeneration of broken bones and wound healing, also helps grow blood vessels to feed the healing areas. The use of synthetic materials has been extensive, but these materials have there own limits and drawbacks. Poor biocompatibility of these materials is the main issue and often result in inflammations. Hence collagen is being heralded as one of the most appropriate replacement as an implantable material. The reasons being that it is a naturally occurring material, exhibits high biocompatibility low antigenicity and host response. This study involes spinning collagen fibers using dispersion made from bovine tendon, and to modify their properties via cross-linking by treating the fibers with gluteraldehdye. These fibers are characterized for mechanical properties, effect of temperature on dimension changes, temperature dependent heat flow, and temperature dependent weight. The above tests are conducted using TMA, DSC and TGA.The fiber diameters and surface features are studied using SEM. The results of these analyses are compared with cross-linking and without cross-linking for each of the three dispersion percentages. The mechanical behavior of cross linked collagen fibers was enhanced relative to the non cross linked fibers with higher denaturation temperature and lower tensile deformation.