Abstract
The role of bone fatigue damage at the nanostructural level, and its effect on fatigue properties is an understudied and important subject. In this study, nanoindentation was used to probe the micro-mechanical properties of bovine tibiae subjected to fatigue loading in four-point bending. Indentation tests were conducted in the same 30 μm × 120 μm region before fatigue loading and after loading to fracture. Using an optical microscope and scanning electron microscope, the morphology of the initial residual indentation before fatigue loading appeared the same as that after loading to fracture. The mechanical properties calculated using nanoindentation were reduced modulus and hardness, the time constant based on creep, long-term creep viscosity and the dissipated work. Differences of each parameter before loading and post fracture were examined using paired t-tests. The results show that the reduced modulus decreased significantly (p = 9.47 × 10–3) by 7.62–15.16% after fracture whereas the time constant of creep increased slightly (p = 0.049) by 2.81–5.41%. There was no clear change in hardness or dissipated work with fatigue loading. Fatigue loading has the largest effect on bone’s reduced modulus compared to all other mechanical properties.
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The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings cannot be shared at this time as the data also forms part of an ongoing study.
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This work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11972247 and 11772204).
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XJM: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Validation, Writing-original draft. QHQ: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing-review & editing, Validation. CYQ: Methodology, Resources, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.
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Cattle bones used in this study were taken from local slaughterhouses, and no animals were euthanized specifically for this study.
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Meng, X., Qin, Q. & Qu, C. Changes in bone’s micromechanical properties caused by fatigue fracture. Int J Fract 231, 243–255 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10704-021-00584-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10704-021-00584-1