Finite Element Analysis of Mice Tibia under Impact Loading

Fracture is one of most common injuries in the clinical diagnosis, mainly existed by the kind of stress fracture. With the fast development in sports area, not only the olds but also more and more young athletes may suffer the disease, usually happening under an impact. Currently there are only limited tests to predict the fracture such as BMD (bone mineral density) testing or biopsies of microdamage, but none of them was specific enough. Under such circumstance, this study will try the FEM (finite element method) to find out the process of impact fracture. A free-fall device was set up and a geometry model of mice tibia was created based on a real one. The results show that under the condition of no fracturethe maximum stresses occurred at two crooks, 1/3 below the knee joint of the tibia and 1/3 above the ankle joint, which were the same with clinical diagnosis statistic. In addition, an experiment was conducted with the same device, and the results were matched with the FEM simulation. Therefore this model of simulation was well suitable for the study on impact fracture, and would help in future fracture prediction.