A non-linear viscoelastic model to describe the mechanical behavior's evolution of biodegradable polymers during hydrolytic degradation

The biodegradable triblock copolymer PLA-b-PEG-b-PLA presents, in its initial state, a non-linear viscoelastic behavior. Its mechanical properties evolves during the in vitro degradation process. Tensile and relaxation tests are performed at 2%, 4% and 6% of load strain for different degradation steps. In order to describe the behavior of the polymer during degradation, an adaptive quasi-linear viscoelastic model is considered. In a first step, the model calibrated on the non-degraded state, perfectly fits the load and relaxation curves for every strain. Then, based on considerations about the preservation of the normalized relaxation curves over degradation time, the adaptive quasi-linear viscoelastic model is adapted to degradation. A degradation parameter that drives the mechanical degradation kinetics is deduced for every tested degradation states. A physically motivated model is finally used to describe the degradation parameter at every degradation step. The whole constitutive model is very accurate to fit the mechanical curves at every strain during degradation.