Abstract
Low back pain is one of the most prevalent health disabilities worldwide. It is suggested that thoracolumbar fascia is possible causality of low back pain due to nerve innervation and pathological changes. A tribological model of fascia layers sliding across each other was developed in the present study. The influence of motion speed was investigated. The experiments were carried out in a pin-on-plate configuration using a normal load of 1 N and a range of speed from 1 to 5 Hz. Additionally, since fascia changes its structure depending on health conditions and physical activity, the influence of material hardness was studied. Therefore, different hardness of PDMS is considered to mimic different densities of the tissues. High-viscosity hyaluronic acid and low-viscosity oil were used as the lubricants. It was revealed that there is an apparent influence of lubricant viscosity with increasing material hardness. The friction increased with increasing movement speed for most of the PDMS hardness investigated. It seems the combination of high viscosity of hyaluronic acid, compliant material, and low speed can lead to low friction behaviour. Therefore, future studies will focus on finding even more compliant material for further development of the model towards mimicking the contact of human soft tissues.
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