Acoustic Emission Signatures During Failure of Vertebra and Long Bone

Clinical classification of an injury has traditionally involved medical imaging, patient history, and physical examination. The pathogenesis or process of injury has been viewed as a crucial component to estimating fracture stability and direct treatment. However, injury classification systems generally exclude pathogenesis and injury mechanisms because these components are often difficult to elucidate. Furthermore, the development of bone damage relative to the mechanical response is difficult to quantify, which limits the ability to define injury and develop injury criteria. Past advents of new knowledge about the mechanisms and progression of fracture have refined safety standards and engineering design for limiting injury. Post-hoc methodologies for identifying and classifying injuries for post-mortem human surrogate (PMHS) research are well established. Though bone fractures can be classified post hoc, questions remain. Surface acoustic sensing (SAS) is an effective approach to augment PMHS experimentation. The objective was to develop and validate an acoustic-emission-based method to characterize bone fractures during injurious loading conditions using acoustic emissions (AEs) in two bone types: vertebral body (VB) and long bone (LB). The newly developed method incorporated the Stockwell transform to estimate the relative energy release rate (RERR) from bone fracture using acoustic signal processing. Fractures were characterized through AE burst durations and frequency content. Results indicated that VB fractures from compression are prolonged processes compared to LB fracture, which was staccato in nature. Significant (p < 0.01) differences between burst duration and frequency content were identified between the two bone types.