Bone fracture analysis on the short rod chevron-notch specimens using the X-ray computer micro-tomography

Mechanical fatigue of bone leads to micro-cracking which is associated with remodeling, establishing a balance in the microcrack population of the living tissue, thus, in the steady-state, the microstructure of bone provides sites of discontinuity acting as stress raisers. Hence fracture toughness plays a decisive role in bone functionality by determining the level to which the material can be stressed in the presence of cracks, or, equivalently, the magnitude of cracking which can be tolerated at a given stress level. Cortical bone, which behaves as a quasi-brittle solid when fractured, was tested as short-rod chevron-notched tension specimens (CNT). The main features of the CNT specimen are its geometry and the V shaped notch. The notch leads to steady-state crack propagation whilst the requested geometry allows a diameter 40% smaller than the thickness of a standard compact tension specimens (CT). These features are essential to distinguish the inhomogeneties in the fracture properties of materials like bone. Bone structure and crack propagation of the CNT specimens were analyzed using X-ray computed micro-tomography (XMT), which is a non-invasive imaging technique. The unique feature of the micro-CT is the high resolution three-dimensional image which consists of multi-sliced tomographs taken in a fine pitch along the rotational axis. Fracture toughness (K(IC)) computed according to the peak load was 4.8 MNm(-3/2) while that derived from experimental calibration tests using XMT was 4.9 MNm(-3/2).