[Behavior of articular cartilage under stress].

The functional principles are described of an electromechanical method for the in vitro determination of microscopic deformities of the articular cartilage under stress. A first series of experiments of human and bovine cartilage obtained from different localizations and by different methods are described. The behaviour of the cartilage can be adequately assessed by means of this test which could be used to devise a mathematic model for the analogic simulation of tissue. By this method, together with other histological and physico-chemical investigations, a more complete formulation of the structure of cartilage is proposed.