Load Transfer along Continuous Collagen Fibers Reduces the Importance of Wall Thickness Variations.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The mechanical response of biological soft tissues is influenced by wall heterogeneity, including spatial variations in wall thickness. Traditional models for homogeneous soft tissues under uniaxial loading predict higher stretch and stress in thinner regions. In fact, large gradients in stretch and stress are predicted to be induced by spatial variations in wall thickness. In prior studies, the role of collagen fibers in regions of thickness transition has been largely neglected or only considered in terms of their effect on anisotropy. Here, we explore the role of collagen fibers as primary load-bearing components across regions of varying wall thickness, using a three-dimensional representative volume element (RVE) model incorporating explicit collagen fiber architecture and a gradual thickness gradient. We examined two distinct collagen fiber configurations across the thickness transition: one featuring abrupt fiber termination and another with fiber continuity. Finite element analysis (FEA) under uniaxial tension revealed that load transfer by continuous fibers across the specimen markedly reduced the importance of the change in wall thickness, with stretch differentials dropping from ~20% (fiber-termination network) to 0.68% (continuous fibers) and stress differentials dropping from ~65% (fiber-termination network) to 2.3% (continuous fibers). Fiber tortuosity delayed the point at which mechanical response was governed by fiber structure. These findings demonstrate the critical role of fiber continuity in reducing stretch and stress gradients across regions of varying wall thickness and clarify the importance of accurately representing fiber architecture when modeling soft tissues with heterogeneous wall thickness.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".