Abstract
Grunewald (1920) asserted that bone is lighter because of its medullary cavity. His first argument is based on the fact that a tube requires less material than a solid rod of equal resistance to bending and of the same length. The diagram (Fig. 1 a-d) gives with figures the effect of the tubular construction on the amount of material required by a rod stressed in bending. The solid rod in Fig. 1 a and the three tubes in Fig. 1 b-d of different diameters and different wall thicknesses have the same length and the same resistance to bending. The weight of the solid rod, which would be 10 kg, can be reduced to 8,75, 6,68 or 4,28 kg if the construction is tubular. It can thus be decreased to less than half for the same resistance to bending and the same length.
Z. Anat. Entwickl. Gesch. 145, 81–85 (1974)
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© 1980 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Pauwels, F. (1980). The Significance of the Medullary Cavity for the Mechanical Stressing of the Tubular Bone. In: Biomechanics of the Locomotor Apparatus. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67138-8_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67138-8_20
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