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Modeling microdamage behavior of cortical bone

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Abstract

Bone is a complex material which exhibits several hierarchical levels of structural organization. At the submicron-scale, the local tissue porosity gives rise to discontinuities in the bone matrix which have been shown to influence damage behavior. Computational tools to model the damage behavior of bone at different length scales are mostly based on finite element (FE) analysis, with a range of algorithms developed for this purpose. Although the local mechanical behavior of bone tissue is influenced by microstructural features such as bone canals and osteocyte lacunae, they are often not considered in FE damage models due to the high computational cost required to simulate across several length scales, i.e., from the loads applied at the organ level down to the stresses and strains around bone canals and osteocyte lacunae. Hence, the aim of the current study was twofold: First, a multilevel FE framework was developed to compute, starting from the loads applied at the whole bone scale, the local mechanical forces acting at the micrometer and submicrometer level. Second, three simple microdamage simulation procedures based on element removal were developed and applied to bone samples at the submicrometer-scale, where cortical microporosity is included. The present microdamage algorithm produced a qualitatively analogous behavior to previous experimental tests based on stepwise mechanical compression combined with in situ synchrotron radiation computed tomography. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of simulating microdamage at a physiologically relevant scale using an image-based meshing technique and multilevel FE analysis; this allows relating microdamage behavior to intracortical bone microstructure.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS, Lugano, Switzerland). F.D. gratefully acknowledges support from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, P.S. from the Swiss National Science Foundation and A.L. from the Whitaker Foundation.

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  1. Davide Ruffoni

    Present address: Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Liege, Liege, Belgium

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Finn Donaldson & Pankaj Pankaj

  2. Edinburgh Orthopaedic Engineering Centre, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Finn Donaldson & Pankaj Pankaj

  3. Institute for Biomechanics, ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Str. 10, 8093 , Zurich, Switzerland

    Finn Donaldson, Davide Ruffoni, Philipp Schneider, Alina Levchuk, Alexander Zwahlen & Ralph Müller

  4. Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Philipp Schneider

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  1. Finn Donaldson
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  2. Davide Ruffoni
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Correspondence to Davide Ruffoni.

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Donaldson, F., Ruffoni, D., Schneider, P. et al. Modeling microdamage behavior of cortical bone. Biomech Model Mechanobiol 13, 1227–1242 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-014-0568-6

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