[Estimations of mechanical properties of bones using nanoindentation]

Nanoindentation has been applied in recent years to measure the mechanical properties of bone tissues at a microscopic scale, overcoming the limitations of traditional mechanical testing techniques for small samples. This method is precise and accurate and appears well suited for measuring mechanical properties in bone. Dynamic nanoindentation is also a promising method of measuring the viscoelastic properties of bone tissues at smaller length and load scales than allowed by other testing methods, thus allowing individual constituents and local regions of inhomogeneous tissues to be characterized individually. This article describes our nanoindentation studies of bone tissues with recent studies.