## 1 Introduction
[10] performed uniaxial cyclic tests on porcine samples at different strain rates (10, 50, 100, 200, 500% s\({}^{-1}\)). Transverse specimens showed greater stiffness and influence of the strain rate than those exhibited by apex-to-base ones. Concerning prostate tissue, most of the biomechanical research has been carried out to study the changes in the mechanical properties of pathological conditions. [PERSON] et al. [11] considered 113 specimens from human normal, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and cancer prostate tissues, which were cut into slab-shaped samples and tested under indentation, revealing that tissue from prostate with BPH resulted significantly softer than normal tissue, while cancers significantly stiffer than normal tissue at both strain ranges. [PERSON] et al. [12] collected 85 fresh chippings via transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) from 17 patients with an ad hoc system for mechanical testing through an electromechanical shaker inducing a cyclic compressive load at actuation frequencies between 5 and 50 Hz to derive strong correlations between mechanical properties and morphology of the prostatic tissue, which may allow a more accurate prediction of the response to a given therapy [12]. Other indentation tests were also performed by [PERSON] et al. [13] and [PERSON] et al. [14], while [PERSON] et al. [15] tested prostate samples, cut parallel and perpendicular to the urethra, through uniaxial load-unload mechanical testing. Both healthy (cadaveric) as well as periurethral tissues obtained from radical prostatectomy were analyzed. These latter reported a wider range of tangent modulus with greater stiffness directly correlated with higher collagen content due to fibrosis and with moderate/severe LUT symptoms. The mechanical basis of the tunica albuginea was only partially studied in human health conditions [16] or disease [17], and in an animal model [18]. In 1990, [PERSON] et al. [16] performed tensile tests up to failure by adopting a tensiometer and exposing the samples to a stepwise increasing pressure. In 2022, [PERSON] et al. [17] designed a testing strategy to characterize the mechanical properties of the tunica albuginea affected by Peyronie's Disease (PD), a progressive fibrosis that can cause tissue mineralization. Uniaxial tensile tests up to failure showed an altered tissue behavior with mineralization, supported by the literature studies on the atherosclerotic plaque mechanics which found higher moduli [19; 20; 21] in calcified plaques compared to healthy tissue. No published studies investigated the biomechanical behavior of Buck's fascia or studied the overall mechanical properties of the different LUT tissues from the same subject. This ongoing challenge is attracting considerable interest among the scientific community due to the close relationship between the functionality of LUT constituent tissues and their mechanical performances. Assessing the mechanical response and identifying and validating the constitutive models of the entire LUT are fundamental steps to develop in silico models for surgical procedures and prosthesis design in order to propose alternative and innovative solutions for most pathologies, such as urinary incontinence and BPH, that nowadays are not always optimized or effective. For the first time, this study aimed to simultaneously mechanically characterize the soft tissues composing the entire human male LUT, thanks to the combination of multiple mechanical tests (uniaxial tensile tests up to failure, stress-relaxation tests and indentation tests) on five different tissues, cut along different directions when possible. Bladder, urethra, prostate, Buck's fascia and tunica albuginea related to corpora cavernosa were obtained from a fresh-frozen 77-year-old male cadaver donor, according to the Body Donation Program of the Institute of Anatomy of the University of Padua [22].