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Mechanical behavior of human cortical bone in cycles of advancing tensile strain for two age groups
Author(s) -
Nyman Jeffry S.,
Roy Anuradha,
Reyes Michael J.,
Wang Xiaodu
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of biomedical materials research part a
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.849
H-Index - 150
eISSN - 1552-4965
pISSN - 1549-3296
DOI - 10.1002/jbm.a.31974
Subject(s) - materials science , strain (injury) , dissipation , ultimate tensile strength , deformation (meteorology) , composite material , stress relaxation , stress (linguistics) , cadaveric spasm , biomedical engineering , medicine , anatomy , creep , linguistics , physics , philosophy , thermodynamics
The capacity of bone for post‐yield energy dissipation decreases with age. To gain information on the causes of such a change, we examined age‐related changes in the mechanical behavior of human cadaveric bone as a function of progressive deformation. In this study, tensile specimens from tibiae of nine middle aged and eight elderly donors were loaded till failure in an incremental and cyclic (load‐dwell‐unload‐dwell‐reload) scheme. The elastic modulus, maximum stress, permanent strain, stress relaxation, permanent strain energy, elastic release strain energy, and hysteresis energy were determined in each loading cycle at incremental strains. Similar with previous work, the results of the present study also indicated that elderly bone failed at much lower strains compared to middle aged bone. However, no significant differences in the mechanical behavior of bone were observed between the two age groups except for the premature failure of elderly bone. After yielding, the energy dissipation and permanent strain of bone appeared to linearly increase with increasing strain applied, while nonlinear changes occurred in the modulus loss and stress relaxation with increasing strain. Moreover, stress relaxation tended to peak at 1% strain beyond which few elderly bone specimens survived. This study suggests that damaging mechanisms in bone vary with deformation, and aging affects the post‐yield mechanisms, thus giving rise to the age‐related differences in the mechanical properties of bone, especially the capacity of the tissue for energy dissipation. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res, 2009