Cancellous Bone Fracture Modeled by Finite Elements at Micro Scale

Introduction The estimation of failure parameters of bone are clinically relevant as in our aged society bone injuries are having greater economic impact. At the macro scale, bone is mainly composed of cortical and trabecular bone. Trabecular bone has major importance in the failure process in bone. The highly hierarchical structure of bone makes it necessary to study its different scales to insight how the fracture occurs. In this work, cancellous bone fracture in two porcine trabecular vertebrae specimens at the micro scale is modeled by finite elements using a strain-based fracture model. The simulations are correlated with experimental tests. This is a preliminary study whose main aims are the estimation of the failure parameters for the fracture model considered and the fracture plane observed experimentally in a compression test of a trabecular specimen at the micro scale.