Abstract
The intervertebral disc is an avascular cartilaginous structure that plays an important role in supporting loads through the spine and providing flexibility to the spinal column. The triphasic theory [1,2] has been used successfully to describe many of the mechanical, chemical and electrical behaviors of cartilaginous tissues. As an example of applying the triphasic theory, Yao and Gu [3] conducted a finite element simulation of human intervertebral disc during compressive stress relaxation using commercial software (FEMLAB). Due to the limitation of the commercial software, in the simulation reported in [3], the computational grid (mesh) is fixed throughout the simulation and the mesh size was not optimized for the specific geometry of the disc.