Such changes can be seen at all levels of bone hierarchy. Changes in the normal loading cycle lead to alterations in bone architecture. However the influence of each variable on fracture of bone is not well understood.īone adapts very well to applied loadings. Our results show that age-related loss in bone toughness results from increased porosity and loss in heterogeneity of material level properties.įracture risk of bone increases with ageing, due to changes in the microstructure, bone loss and changes in the material quality of bone. The changes in the material constants due to the simplification of the model were taken into account by using effective material parameters in these partitions. The other areas were meshed with a small number of larger elements. Crack area was meshed with a higher number of smaller elements. Cavities were modelled only in the estimated crack area to avoid a high number of degrees of freedom. Micro computed tomography images of compact-tension samples machined from a 19 and an 81 years old donor were used to generate Finite Element meshes consisting of linear tetrahedrons via Mimics. In this study, the ABAQUS extended Finite Elements Method (xFEM) was applied to simulate the crack propagation in compact bone samples using the quadratic nominal stress as crack criterion. The Finite Element method offers the opportunity to determine the individual contribution of a parameter by changing single parameters. The influence of the different parameters affecting bone quality is not well understood. Due to changes in the bone quality during ageing the fracture risk increases.

Materialise Mimics 17 Crack