Mechanical behavior of human cortical bone in cycles of advancing tensile strain for two age groups

The capacity of bone for post-yield energy dissipation decreases with age. To gain information on the cause of such changes, we examined the mechanical behavior of human cadaveric bone as a function of progressive deformation. In this study, tensile specimens from tibiae of 9 middle aged and 8 elderly donors were loaded till failure in an incremental and cyclic (load-dwell-unload-dwell-reload) scheme. The elastic modulus, maximum stress, permanent strain, stress relaxation, viscoelastic time constant, plastic strain energy, elastic release strain energy, and hysteresis energy were determined at incremental strains of each loading cycle. Experimental results showed that elderly bone failed at much lower strains compared to middle aged bone, but little age-related differences were observed in the mechanical behavior of bone until the premature failure of elderly bone. Energy dissipation and permanent strain appeared to linearly increase with increasing strain, while non-linear changes occurred in the modulus loss and stress relaxation/time constant with increasing strain. Such changes suggest that two distinct stages may exist in the progressive deformation of bone. In Stage I, rapid damage accumulation and increased involvement of collagen in load bearing appeared to dominate the mechanical behavior of bone with limited energy dissipation (<20% of total energy dissipated), whereas Stage II is dominated by continuous plastic deformation, accompanied by major energy dissipation through all three pathways till failure. This study suggests that damaging mechanisms in bone vary with deformation and age affects the post-yield mechanisms causing a significant decline in the capacity of aged bone to dissipate energy.