Effect of the direction of m. psoas major fibres on the results of tensile test - can we model meat as a material?

The aim of this study was to examine the possibility of tensile-test application at three strain rates (0.01/s and 0.001/s and 0.001/s) on suitable samples of grilled pork meat (musculus psoas major). Differences in the stress-strain curves were observed between the two directions of the muscle fibres (i.e. strain parallel to and transverse to the fibres). However, the strain rate of 0.001/s resulted in the most linear stress-strain curves for strain in both muscle fibre directions. Also, results confirmed that specimens tested transversally to the muscle fibre direction required less stress to fracture. We also concluded that specimens stretch more in the direction transverse to the muscle fibre direction for strain rates of 0.01/s and 0.001/s. Gaining knowledge from different methods of empirical mechanical testing of meat should enhance the possibility of forming material constitutive laws to be used as input to finite element simulations of industrial processes of meat such as cutting or of human oral processing