Table 3.

Progression of fatigue damage during controlled in vivo loading: the effect on collagen fibril architecture.

Level of fatigue	Collagen fibril architecture
No fatigue	Aligned collagen fibrils
Low-level fatigue	Kinked fibre deformations
Moderate fatigue	Kinked fibre deformation with widening of the inter-fibre space
High-level fatigue	Severe matrix disruption, fibre thinning, angulations and fibre discontinuities

Source: Data collated from Neviaser et al.³⁶