Relationship between cycles to failure and the rate of damage and creep in fatigue tests of human cortical bone

Cotton, John R., Winwood, Keith, Zioupos, Peter and Taylor, Mark (2003) Relationship between cycles to failure and the rate of damage and creep in fatigue tests of human cortical bone. ASME Summer Bioengineering Conference, Florida, USA. 24 - 28 Jun 2003. pp. 209-210 .

Abstract

The fatigue failure of bone has been implicated in a number of pathologies. Both implant design and clinical assessment would be enhanced by the ability to simulate fatigue failure. Like most materials, bone exhibits a decreasing fatigue life with increasing stress. During fatigue, bone also creeps and loses stiffness. The adequate characterization of all of these effects is necessary for finite element simulations of fatigue failure.
Using human cortical bone samples, many authors have studied fatigue life as a function of applied stress [e.g. 1,2,3]. Loss of stiffness (typically Young’s modulus) due to fatigue has also been studied [2,3], as has creep [4].
Here we present the results of fatigue tests of cortical bone samples taken from four individuals. Samples were tested in tensile fatigue until failure. Unlike earlier works examining the cumulative modulus loss, we find the rate of stiffness loss, which is fairly constant over the majority of the fatigue life. We will present data of applied maximum stress, cycles to failure, rate of modulus loss, and creep rate.

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