On the specimen length dependency of tensile mechanical properties in soft tissues: Gripping effects and the characteristic decay length

Uniaxial tensile tests to failure have regularly been employed to characterise the material properties of various biological tissues, ranging from heart valves (Anssari-Benam et al., 2011) and arteries (Teng et al., 2009; Lillie et al., 2010) to tendons (Legerlotz et al., 2010), intervertebral discs (Nerurkar et al., 2010) and liver (Brunon et al., 2010), providing valuable quantitative data on important mechanical properties such as ultimate stress, strain and modulus. These properties, by definition, are intrinsic material properties and thus should not depend on the geometry of the specimen