Alan Bordon and Dr. Anton Bowden, Mechanical Engineering

My ORCA grant proposal was to study the effect that freezing and thawing a soft tissue has on the results of the mechanical property tests (i.e how strong) performed on the tissue. I was to study the effect of a single and multiple freeze/thaw cycles on the tissue. My hypothesis was that there was a deleterious effect and this was important to account for when doing testing with soft tissue.

One of the greatest challenges of working with soft tissue (such as tendon or ligament) is that it is very slippery. The first challenge of my project was to develop the proper equipment needed to grip the tissue without slipping. This was a joint project with several other engineers in my research group. We each took different parts of the tissue grip design and manufactured them by hand. A similar apparatus could be purchased for close to $20,000, far beyond our budget. Unfortunately, the design and building process is not completed quickly and, like many great engineering endeavors, we ran into set-backs, such as delayed shipment of materials, equipment break-down, scheduling difficulties with the machine shop, and part compliance.

The design and build of the equipment started in anticipation of receiving a grant during the Fall semester. After working through all of the challenges of designing mechanical equipment it was the end of March before the equipment was assembled and ready to be used in testing. This left only a few weeks to try and do testing on tissue before graduation, all the while trying to prepare to take the medical school admissions test, and prepare for finals before we moved to Atlanta, GA for work. After discussing the situation with my mentor, it was decided that it would be best for me to try and collect the data in the Fall when I would have several uninterrupted weeks to work.

So, in mid-October, I returned to BYU with two weeks to take data. I got to work immediately and picked up where I left off. Luckily the equipment was still in working order. I simply had to obtain some cow tendons and do my testing, or so I thought.

After getting my first set of tendons and dissecting them, I began to run tests on the apparatus to try and determine the best setup to make the tendon fail (break) in between the grips, rather than at the grip. After running about six samples, I was having a reoccurring problem – the tendons were not breaking at all. In fact, there was so much deformation in the testing apparatus that I often had to cancel the test because I was worried the tissue grips would break. The whole tendons were just too strong.

Through the testing of tissues I had discovered a weakness in the design of our grips. When engineering moving parts, it is often wise to use to different materials when they are rubbing against each other to reduce wear and the chance for binding. The grips themselves were stainless steel, but the threaded rods used to tighten the grips were made from brass – a much softer material which was bending during the tests.

This left me with two options: build a new testing apparatus, or reducing the cross-sectional area of the ligament without sacrificing the quality of the data. Building an apparatus was out of the question, due to time constraints, so I went about taking slices of tendon rather than the whole tendon.

After two weeks of at least eight hours a day dedicated to my research (and a disappointing BYU loss to TCU) I was unable to get data that I was satisfied with, because after dozens of trials I was still having difficulty obtaining a mid-substance failure on a consistent basis.

Despite the seeming failure of my work, after speaking with my mentor, Dr. Bowden, he helped me see a silver lining to all of my work. First, I learned that we could improve the testing by making a new testing apparatus (grips 2.0) that would be easier to use (by making the grip tightening system operational by a single person) and not have the problem of so much elastic deformation during testing. Secondly, I figured out a lot of ways that were not viable options for obtaining a uniform piece of tissue. I tried whole tissues, ripping the tissue along the layers of tendon, using a meat slicer, and even trying to sculpt tissue with a scalpel (which gave the best results, but was really time consuming). Last of all, the counsel of my mentor was verified. When setting out to find a project worthy of an ORCA grant he advised me that if I ran into difficulties with the project that it really would be worthy of a master’s thesis, because it would require more time to complete. If I decided to do a masters project, it was already laid before me.

Personally, I learned a great deal about the research process and the difficulties in setting up a quality experiment. I learned that in order to do quality research, a lot of patience and perseverance is required. Last of all I learned that even though your experiments do not go as planned, it does not mean that you are not learning important lessons from your apparent failures. I hope that my research will set the stage for another student to come along, pick up the reigns, and succeed at testing the hypothesis.