SIZE REQUIREMENTS OF COMPACT SANDWICH SPECIMEN FOR TESTING OF BONE

It is well understood that bone quality deteriorates due to aging, disease, etc., and may be affected by factors at different length scales due to its hierarchical microstructure. Fracture toughness is one of the properties that assess bone quality. The compact sandwich (CS) specimen gives a better choice of bone sample size, and therefore suits a wide variety of fracture toughness testing needs and constraints. Reliable and statistically valid overall CS specimen size requirements are established in this paper; these serve as guidelines for choosing the CS specimen size. Finite element analysis (FEA) is used for simulating fracture toughness tests. Experimental fracture toughness tests are carried out to verify the FEA results. The experimental results are verified qualitatively by performing scanning electron microscopy (SEM) on the fractured specimen surfaces.