Modeling the microstructurally dependent mechanical properties of poly(ester-urethane-urea)s

Poly(ester-urethane-urea) (PEUU) is one of many synthetic biodegradable elastomers under scrutiny for biomedical and soft tissue applications. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of the experimental parameters on mechanical properties of PEUUs following exposure to different degrading environments, similar to that of the human body, using linear regression, producing one predictive model. The model utilizes two independent variables of poly(caprolactone) (PCL) type and copolymer crystallinity to predict the dependent variable of maximum tangential modulus (MTM). Results indicate that comparisons between PCLs at different degradation states are statistically different (p0.0003), while the difference between experimental and predicted average MTM is statistically negligible (p0.02). The linear correlation between experimental and predicted MTM values is R(2) = 0.75.