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Experimental Determination of Material Properties of Cortical Cadeveric

Femur Bone

Article · May 2008

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Trends Biomater. Artif. Experimental Determinati55n
Organs, Vol 22(1), of Material Properties of cortical Cadeveric Femur Bone
pp 9-15 (2008) http://www.sbaoi.org

Experimental Determination of Material Properties of Cortical Cadeveric

Femur Bone

Mrudula S. Kulkarni*, S.R. Sathe

College of Engineering, Pune, Maharashtra

*corresponding author e-mail: mrudulakulkarni2000@yahoo.com
Received 8 August 2007; published online 1 July 2008

The present work aims at evaluating material properties of femur bone in Indian subjects, so as to facilitate
further study of total hip joint and replacement of joint in Indian subjects. These properties are required to be
determined before F.E.M. analysis of indegenised hip joint to study its stability in the bone. The shaft of the
artificial hip joint is fixed in femur bone in its proximal and medial cancellous portion. Study of The interaction
of metallic joint with bone material necessitates the mechanical properties of bone to be evaluated. These
properties were derived from femur bones of Indian donors. This experimental study aims at determining
orthotropic behavior of cancelleous portion of cadeveric femur bone. This property may prove useful in
studies related to total hip joint replacements. This study attempts at providing comprehensive items of mechanical
properties of cadeveric cancellous distal femur, through series of mechanical tests, which comprised of
tensile testing, compression testing, shear testing. The specimens were extracted from normal Indian donors.
Series of experimental data stated here include tensile strength, compressive strength, and yield strength,
modulus of elasticity, torsional strength and shear modulus, which can reflect the complex material behavior
of femur bone. The experimental results establish orthotropic nature of femur bone as expected. © Society for
Biomaterials and Artificial Organs (India), 20070808-8.

Introduction Plexiform bone (e.g. cow femur) is an example

of a tissue with orthotropic material symmetry.
The present study aims at obtaining in vitro
Materials that have properties that are constant
elastic characteristics of compact cadeveric
within a given plane are termed transversely
human femur bone. In bone, like wood and many
isotropic. Human osteonal bone is an example
other biological structures, there is a “grain” or
of a transversely isotropic material because it
preferred direction associated with the structure.
has the same Young’s modulus in all transverse
Consequently, the mechanical behavior of bone
directions, but has a higher Young’s modulus in
and other directional composites is dependent
the longitudinal direction. To determine the 9
upon the direction of the applied load. Bone
independent elastic coefficients of an orthotropic
material is assumed as anisotropic17, and as
material the following mechanical tests are
many as 21 independent elastic constants are
required, Tensile or compressive tests in each
required to completely characterize their
of three mutually perpendicular material
mechanical behavior. Most materials have
directions; three lateral deformation tests to
planes of symmetry that reduce the number of
obtain Poisson’s ratios, and torsion tests to
material constants. For example, materials
obtain shear modulus.
having properties that differ in each of two
mutually perpendicular directions are termed Several standards from the ASTM have been
orthotropic, and 9 elastic constants are required adapted for mechanical testing procedures on
to fully characterize their mechanical behavior. biological tissue. Bone is assumed to be highly
10 M.S. Kulkarni, S.R. Sathe
anisotropic. This anisotropy in different tissues
may vary. In the long bone appetite needles,
collagen fibers, lamellae, blood vessala, etc.
show a clear tendency to be oriented along length
of bone. So the tensile strength and stiffness of
bone will be greater along its length. In general
most of the loads in bone are likely to be acting
along its length. This is true for bending and
compression during walking. Tension is rarely
applied to a bone as a whole. Occasional torsion
loading creates tensile force at roughly
45degrees to the long axis. So combined torsion
and bending affects the long bones like femur
bone. The great advantage of femur bone an as
composite is that it can be so arranged that in at
least one direction the material is much stronger
and stiffer than isotropic material of same
composition. so it exhibits weakness in at least
one direction. This is the direction in which large
force do not act.
Literature review
Pithioux1 et.al.T.Goldman6 Lakes17 have used
ultra sound method for evaluating orthotrophy of
bone. Autopsy study at Orthopedic Dept, Uiievaal8
Hospital.Oslo,Norway shows significant
association between two types of cortical bone
mechanical tests, three point bending and pull-
out of screw performed on femur bone. Similarly
pair wise association was found between
mechanical tests of cancelleous bone, punch
and cube compression performed on femur
bone. However cortical and cancellious bone
mechanical properties were not related which
suggests a separate regulation of strength of
these types of bone. Du C 14,15et.al. have given
comprehensive study of distal femur obtained
through a series of mechanical tests, which
comprised of tensile test, compression test,
torsion test shear test etc. the study states that
biomechanical properties of the cancellious
bone have close relationship with individual
difference. The nominal values of compressive
strength limits of elasticity, strain, and elastic
modulus are reported for cancellious femur
bone. Lake R.S. 17et.al. have evaluated the
material properties of cortical and cancellious
bone to use them in anisotropic finite element
model of the proximal femur. Mechanical
properties were found out experimentally. All
material properties had to be defined in defined
directions (axial, transverse) without correlating
to apparent density, age dependant changes.
Pithioux 1 has evaluated orthotropic elastic
properties or cortical bone using ultrasound
method. The bone elastic modulus results
tested vary by ± 20 Mpa. The various studies on
mechanical properties of bone do not give wide
range of statistical data because of extensive
parameters involved in experimental study. So
this study aims at creating database for
determining mechanical properties if cortical
portion of femur. These properties will be useful
in the study of finite element studies of Total Hip
joint replacement.
Theoretical approach and identification of
elastic constants
In this study we have considered human
cadeveric femur bone as elastic medium. These
bones have lamellar structure and are generally
considered transversely isotropic or orthotropic.
For anisotropic medium Hooke‘s law is stated
as follows:
σij (x) = Cijkl (x) εkl (x), where = (1,2,3) (1)
i,j,k,l
In (1) σij denotes the ij component of stress tensor,
and εkl denotes the component of strain tensor.
For fully anisotropic case there are 81
components for modulus tensor of which 21 are
independent. The materials, which have some
structural symmetry, are described by fewer
anisotropic elastic constants. Because of
transverse isotropy only nine independent
elements were determined.
Material as transversely isotropic
Ideally, mechanical test specimens should be
oriented relative to the axes of material symmetry.
In the case of cortical bone, the mutually
perpendicular axes of material symmetry are
generally one axis oriented parallel to the long
axis of the bone, another oriented radially outward
from the center, and the third oriented in a
circumferential direction. In order to assure that
specimens are cut in the proper orientation axes
of material symmetry must be determined prior
to testing, and are typically defined based upon
histology. Loads applied in tension,
compression, torsion, shear, and in combined
modes on specimens cut in many different
orientations are necessary to completely
describe the anisotropic failure surface.
 Experimental Determination of Material Properties of Cortical Cadeveric Femur Bone
The modulus tensor elements are represented
using reduced index notation.
C11 C12 C13 0 0 0
Cijkl = C12 C22 C23 0 0 0 engineering materials have been well
C13 C23 C33 0 0 0 established. In case of bone, however,
0 0 0 C44 0 0
0 0 0 0 C55 0 restrictions imposed by the finite size of the bone
0 0 0 0 0 C66
Axis (ox3) was taken to be the fiber axis. The
material is assumed to be isotropic in the
(ox1,ox2) plane(perpendicular to fibers).
C11,C22,C33 represent axial stiffness in radial,
circumferential and longitudinal directions,
C44,C55,C66 represent shear modulii.C12,C13,C23
are poisons ratio related stiffness elements. A
fairly axisymmeteric material like femur bone is
represented as transversely isotropic in which
C22 is equal to C11 because of equivalence of two
transverse directions.
Mechanical Testing procedures
The preservation technique adopted for
specimens prior to testing is as follows.
The specimens were freezed at -20°C in saline-
soaked gauze. During testing, care is taken to
ensure that the test specimens are kept hydrated.
Basic specimen preparation was done
according to standards of materials testing code
like American Society for Testing and Materials.
(ASTM) Designations for compressive testing
(ASTM C469, D1621), tensile testing (ASTM
C565, D1623, D3039, D3044, E8, and E132),
and shear testing (ASTM D143) provide a source
of mechanical testing techniques. The aging and
disease processes produce significant changes
in the composition, geometry and architecture
of bone. These effects are assumed to be
minimum by selecting good samples so as to
have little alterations in the mechanical
properties of bone and consequently the
response of bone to loading.
In principle, mechanical testing of bone is
straightforward. Experimental results, however,
can be affected by specimen preparation and
test methods used and by environmental
conditions. In particular, loading-rate,
deformation-rate, specimen size, specimen
11
shape, mode of loading, and the method of
gripping test specimens can influence the
mechanical response of bone and engineering
materials. These strict standards for testing
standardized engineering materials testing
methods cannot always be utilized due to
(2) specimens, difficulties in gripping the
specimens and/or relatively low loads that can
be applied to bone.
Tensile Testing
Tensile testing can be one of the most accurate
methods for measuring bone properties, but
bone specimens must be relatively large and
should be carefully machined. The specimen
shape most widely used in testing bone tissue
is the so-called “dog bone” specimen, and the
end portions of these specimens are enlarged
diameter regions where the specimen will be
attached to the testing apparatus. The test region
or gauge section consists of a turned down
section of decreased cross-sectional area, and
ideally it is in this region that the specimen should
fail.
Samples are kept hydrated using saline water
during machining. Tensile test specimens for
cortical bone and cancellous bone are prismatic
bars of rectangular cross section and length upto
60mm to accommodate the sample in grips of
tensile testing machine. The grip length is one
quarter of the whole specimen length .
Compression Testing
The specimens for compression test are rough
cut cubes out of bone with orientation of
specimens maintained along the axis of long
bone.The band saw and diamond saw was used
for cutting. The markings made to identify the
orientation of bone helps in testing the specimen
along and across the grains. During test they
were kept at room temperature (~24oC)in wet
condition. Compression testing of bone
specimens is a popular technique, especially
for cortical bone because relatively small
specimens can be used. Compressive tests,
however, tend to be less accurate than tensile
tests due to friction and compression-platen end
effects imposed on the bone specimen during
12 M.S. Kulkarni, S.R. Sathe
the test. Friction at the load platen-bone surface
interface can be minimized using polished
stainless steel platens lubricated with a coating
of light weight machine oil. A surface roughness
-1
of 2mm / cm is recommended. If the load faces
of the bone specimen are slightly misaligned
with respect to the compression loading platen,
then large stress concentrations can occur, result
an underestimation of both Young’s modulus
and compressive strength. Placement of a
pivoting platen in the load train reduces
misalignment error. Using a micrometer, the
parallelism of the load-contacting surfaces of
each specimen can be assessed by measuring
the height differences between each of the four
sides and a central point of the load-contacting
surfaces. Four height differences, recorded by
assigning a value of zero to the lowers point
among the five points, can be utilized to
determine the parallelism index.
I = 1/4 ( Dmax + Dmax - D1 + Dmax - D2 + Dmax - D3 )
= Dmax - 1/4 ( D1 + D2 + D3 )
(3)
Where Dmax is the maximum height difference,
D1, D2 and D3 are the other height differences
ranging from 0 to Dmax, and the factor 1/4 is used
to obtain an averaged nominal height difference.
This index considers both the absolute
differences between each point and zero
reference point, and the relative difference
between individual points. The higher the index,
the greater the irregularity of the surface plane.
This index may be normalized by the linear
dimension of a cross-sectional area of a sample
(width or diameter) to indicate a nominal flatness
of a contacting surface.
Porous composites and porous bone
specimens will exhibit a crushing phenomenon
associated with progressive pore collapse and
stabilization. In this case failure is generally
defined as the point at which pore collapse is
first observed (typically the point at which the
initial drop in load is observed. Fracture under
compression does not occur in ductile materials
since the material merely flows laterally as the
height is decreasing. Thus, the definition of
compressive strength depends upon the degree
of distortion that is regarded as indicating failure
of the material. Fracture is usually of the shear
type with sliding along inclined planes starting
at the surface on which the pressure is applied.
Low ductility or brittle materials may not
necessarily have well defined yield points, but
do exhibit definite failure points, since they fail in
compression by a shattering type of fracture.
Fracture of brittle material depends upon, the
ratio of height to lateral dimension (aspect ratio),
Friction between the compression platens and
the specimen, and the shape of the specimen.
Torsion test
There were limitations on preparing cylindrical
torsion specimen because tools were hard as
compared to bone. The equivalent circular cross
section was considered for torsion test. For this
test sample length was required minimum of
100 mm to facilitate the sample fixing in jaws of
torsion testing machine. Sample was fixed in
testing machine using cotton so that it will not
slip during test as well as damage the specimen
at grips. As far as possible straight samples
were used for testing, as small curvature may
lead to considerable error in results. Machine
was calibrated to 0.5 Nm per division. Reading
o
were taken at each 5 interval till the sample
breaks. From these readings graphs were
plotted. Torque Vs angle of rotation to obtain
shear modulus.
Evaluation of Elastic constants
To find elastic constants of bone, fundamental
elasticity equations are used assuming
transverse isotropy of bone. Measurement of
longitudinal and lateral deformations facilitates
calculation of strains in respective directions.
Stresses are evaluated from loads applied. As
noted previously, environmental testing
conditions play a significant role during
mechanical testing. Differences of up to 10% in
material properties can result from changes in
temperature.
Determination of Mechanical Properties
Yield Point – In a mechanical sense, the yield
point is the point where structural changes
begin. For bone specimens this point is
presumed to be near the point where the slope
of the stress-strain curve is seen to
decrease. Such a definition, however, is not very
precise, and methods for determination of the
yield point vary accordingly. In analyzing a stress-
 Experimental Determination of Material Properties of Cortical Cadeveric Femur Bone
strain curve wherein there is no distinct yield
point the ASTM (American Society for Testing and
Materials) Committee on Mechanical Testing
suggests that the 0.2% offset criteria for
engineering material is used to determine the
yield stress. The yield point by the offset criterion
is defined as the intersection between the
compression curve and a line parallel with the
maximum slope and displaced 0.2% strain
(ASTM E8). Although this definition is precise, it
has some disadvantages. Significant structural
changes have probably occurred before that
point, and due to the slightly different shape of
stress-strain curves of weak specimens
compared to stronger specimens, a yield strain
close to and even larger than the ultimate strain
is sometimes found in weak specimens. A
smaller strain offset will eliminate this problem,
and for biomechanical testing a strain-offset of
0.1% is preferred and may become standardized
for future testing. A more physiologic definition
of the yield point would be the point where the
slope has reached maximum in its mathematical
sense
Moduli of Elasticity - Elastic modulus values were
evaluated using the average initial cross-
sectional area of the test specimens in the
calculations. Note that the stress-strain relations
of many biological tissues do not conform to
Hook’s law throughout the elastic range but may
deviate from this idealized linear stress-strain
behavior at stresses well below the elastic limit.
For such materials the slope of the tangent to
the stress-strain curve at a low stress is usually
taken as the modulus of elasticity. Since the
existence of a true proportional limit in biological
Table 1: Poisson’s Ratio
Direction Lateral
Strain
1 0.017
2 0.015
3 0.012
13
tissue is debatable, the appropriateness of
applying the term “modulus of elasticity” to
describe the stiffness of rigidity of a biological
specimen has been seriously questioned.
Number of samples tested are large, many were
discarded during testing as the samples were
damaged during load application hence those
results could not be accepted. Average of the
test results and values of poison’s ratio are
presented in table 1.
Discussion and conclusion
Specimen geometry has highly significant
influence on mechanical properties such as
stiffness, ultimate strain and energy absorption.
A cube with a side length of 8 mm and a cylindrical
specimen with a length of 16 mm and a diameter
of 8 mm are suggested as standard geometries,
it is difficult to maintain this geometry while
machining specimens out of samples.
Rectangular samples are better than cube, as
hypothesized by Lakes17 .
Standard testing of small trabecular bone
specimens is associated with systematic
errors. The most significant of these errors are
related to the integrity of trabeculae at the cut or
machined surfaces of the test specimen and
friction at the specimen-platen interface. For each
experiment, a series of tests were required to
be conducted so that calculations of the
arithmetic mean of all values can be obtained.
As the grain orientation is not straight along the
length of bone they are seen diverging according
to the shape of bone. Small square or rectangular
cross sectional sample give good results.
Linear Poison's
Strain Ratio
0.00374 ν12 = 0.22
0.003 ν23= 0.2
0.00252 ν13= 0.21
14
M.S. Kulkarni, S.R. Sathe
Table 2: Elastic Constants of bone
Modulus of Elasticity Poison's Ratio
2 2
N/mm
E1=11737 ν12 = 0.22
E2=8755 ν23 = 0.20
E3=7896 ν13 = 0.21
During cutting and finishing of sample it is found
that bone sample reduces its minerals due to
high heat formation due to friction at cut which
ultimately tends to reduce strength of bone and
causes error in final results. But sample
prepared by using saline water as lubricant to
release heat at interface of cutter and bone
sample shows considerable good results.
It is found that sample length must be enough
so that it can fit properly in jaws of testing
machine. But at the same time length should
not go beyond limit because bone sample may
not be straight for large length and may have
curved length and have very small thickness,
Hence optimized sample has to be done.
It is found that particularly in tension testing, if
the sample having small curvature of more than
6 0 fails during fixing in jaws. This situation is not
desirable. If the specimen fails outside of the
gauge region or near the edge of the gauge
region this is an indication that alignment errors
or other interface artifacts caused premature
failure of the specimen. The ultimate strength
of the material being tested is underestimated
when this occurs. As bone is found to shrink with
very small amount but considerable amount in
testing machines jaws as the sample has to be
fixed tight. Which causes error in results to avoid
this sand paper or cotton is used at the interface
of sample and jaws.
The major problem seen during test is breaking
of sample at jaws itself due to excessive
tightening. To avoid this also sand paper or cotton
is used It is evident that bone has greater
strength in compression than tension which is
very obvious as bone is mostly subjected to
compression than tension.
For cortical bone material the modulus of
elasticity obtained from tension and
Modulus Of Rigidity
N/mm
G12=4810.2
G23=3647.9
G13=3262.81
compression are not identical. That
demonstrates orthotropic nature of bone
material.
Because of limitations of machining operations
on bone, it was difficult to maintain same
dimensions for all specimens. The samples
were machined to the desired dimensions
without harming its microstructure so to offset
experimental results to minimum possible
degree.
By the time specimens are tested for various
test conditions they are hydrated to some extent,
which was not possible to measure. Due to this
loss of moisture literature shows up to 5%
decline in modulus of elasticity. We anticipate
this loss in elastic modulus in this experimental
study.
The exact stress-strain characteristics of
biological materials are dependent on such
factors as strain rate, temperature, previous
specimen stress history, etc. Thus, when
applied to biologic tissue, the precise meaning
of mechanical property is most useful if this
dependency is understood..
The bone material tested in this study is derived
from trabecular and cortical portion of cadeveric
femur bones of Indian subjects. For cortical bone
as specimens are cut from hollow cylindrical
tubular portion of bone direction to cylindrical
bone be similar. So in cortical portion it is
expected to be orthotropic material. The values
of elastic modulus of femur in Indian donors is
seen to be higher than the values of modulus
stated by Pithioux1 measured by ultra sound
method for femur bone of European donors. The
values of poisons ratio and shear modulus are
in well agreement with the poisons ratio
evaluated by Pithioux 1 .The method of
 Experimental Determination of Material Properties of Cortical Cadeveric Femur Bone
15

preservation of sample and amount of hydration Acknowledgement

is the influencing factor and its effect needs to
Author acknowledges the cooperation extended
be evaluated. Variation in material properties of
by Principal, MIT Pune, Rajarshi Shahu
Indian femur bone over European bone data
Engineering College Pune,while carrying out the
available will be major parameter in design of
experimental work at their premises.
hip joint prosthesis for use on Indian patients.

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