Figure 3

Enzymatic digestion results in changes in cartilage stress-relaxation. Significant decreases in and τ compared with HBSS controls indicate that stress-relaxation proceeded faster in enzymatically-digested samples than in HBSS controls after 1 day of treatment. , peak stress, and equilibrium stress were calculated directly from the experimental data, and τ and β were determined by nonlinear curvefitting of the stretched exponential model to the stress-relaxation data. *indicates p ≤ 0.01 compared to HBSS-control at the same day. # indicates p < 0.01 within a group between days 1 and 2 using Bonferroni Post-hoc tests.