Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Mech Behav Biomed Mater. 2013 Sep 8;29:10.1016/j.jmbbm.2013.08.025. doi: 10.1016/j.jmbbm.2013.08.025

Figure 6.

Figure 6

Representative pressure-volume curves of the vaginal vaults of (top) multiparous and virgin and (bottom) simulated two day and two week postpartum Sprague-Dawley rats. As discussed in the text, the change in volume with pressure is observed to follow an exponential. In all cases studied, the change in volume with pressure was fit to a mathematical model introduced in pressure-volume studies of the lung (Salazar and Knowles, 1964), allowing for a determining the stiffness of the vaginal vault; resulting parameters from the fit are documented in Table 3. The red lines shown in each case represent a 22 fit of equation 4 to the experimental data. The slope of each curve is quantified by the parameter h (or κ). One should note that the maximal volume (Vo), the asymptotic value achieved in the pressure-volume curves shown, varies across rats with multiparous rats exhibiting the largest value.