Mechano-electrochemical responses of hydrogels immersed in multi-ionic solutions

A new method was developed to analyze the mechano-electrochemical response of hydrogel, an intelligent material. The basic equations of multi-phase mixture theory were split into two simply coupled problems - an electrochemical equilibrium problem and a biphase flow problem. Numerical results for steady permeation with a given hydraulic pressure in biological soft tissues was used to evaluate the accuracy of the multi-phase mixture theory to predict the mechano-electrochemical coupled response of hydrogels. The results show that the multi-phase mixture theory can effectively predict the responses of biological soft tissues and hydrogels.Department of Health Technology and Informatic