Tensile, flexural and compressive strength studies on natural and artificial phosphate urinary stones

Mechanical properties of renal calculi dictate how a stone interacts and disintegrates by shock wave or intracorporeal lithotripsy techniques. Renal stones of different compositions have large variation in their mechanical strength and susceptibilities to shock waves. Operated urinary stones and artificially developed stones using pharmaceutical methods, composed of phosphates were subjected to tensile, flexural and compressive strength studies using universal testing machine. The infrared spectra confirmed the presence of hydroxyapatite in both the natural stones and struvite with calcium oxalate trihydrate in one stone and struvite with uric acid in the other. The X-ray diffraction analyses confirmed their crystalline nature. It has been observed that the flexural properties depend on the size of the sample even for the samples cut from a single stone. The compressive strengths were almost 25 times larger than the tensile strengths of the respective natural stones as well as the artificial stones prepared.