Microstructure, mineral and mechanical properties of teleost intermuscular bones.

There is an increasing interest in understanding teleost bone biomechanics in several scientific communities, for instance as interesting biomaterials with specific structure-function relationships. Intermuscular bones of teleost fish have previously been described to play a role in the mechanical force transmission between muscle and bone, but their biomechanical properties are not yet fully described. Here, we have investigated intermuscular bones (IBs) of the North Atlantic Herring with regard to their structure and micro-architecture, mineral-related properties, and micro-mechanical tensile properties. A total of 115 IBs from 18 fish were investigated. One cohort of IBs, containing 20 bones from 2 smaller fish and 23 bones of 3 larger fish, was used for mechanical testing, wide-angle X-ray scattering, and scanning electron microscopy. Another cohort, containing 36 bones from 7 smaller fish and 36 bones from 6 larger fish, was used for microCT. Results show some astonishing properties of the IBs: (i) IBs present higher ductility, lower Young's modulus but similar strength and TMD (Tissue Mineral Density) compared to mammalian bone, and (ii) IBs from small fish were 49% higher in Young's modulus than fish bones from larger fish while their TMD was not statistically different and crystal length was 8% higher in large fish bones. Our results revealed that teleost IB presents a hybrid nature of soft and hard tissue that differs from other bone types, which might be associated with their evolution from mineralized tendons. This study provides new data regarding teleost fish bone biomechanical and micro-structural properties.

Finite element dependence of stress evaluation for human trabecular bone.

Numerical simulation using finite element models (FEM) has become more and more suitable to estimate the mechanical properties of trabecular bone. The size and kind of elements involved in the models, however, may influence the results. The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of hexahedral elements formulation on the evaluation of mechanical stress applied to trabeculae bone during a compression test simulation. Trabecular bone cores were extracted from 18 L2 vertebrae (12 women and 6 men, mean age: 76 ± 11, BV/TV=7.5 ± 1.9%). Samples were micro-CT scanned at 20 µm isotropic voxel size. Micro-CT images have been sub-sampled (20, 40 and 80 µm) to create 5.6 mm cubic FEM. For each sample, a compression test FEM has been created, using either 8-nodes linear hexahedral elements with full or reduced integration or 20-nodes quadratic hexahedral elements fully integrated, resulting in nine models per samples. Bone mechanical properties have been assumed isotropic, homogenous and to follow a linear elastic behavior law (Young modulus: 8 GPa, Poisson ratio: 0.3). Despite micro-architecture modifications (loss of connectivity, trabeculae thickening) due to voxel size increase, apparent mechanical properties calculated with low resolution models are significantly correlated with high resolution results, no matter the element formulation. However, stress distributions are more sensitive to both resolution and element formulation modifications. With linear elements, increasing voxel size leads to an alteration of stress concentration areas due to stiffening errors. On the opposite, the use of reduced integration induces severe smoothing and underestimation of stress fields resulting in stress raisers loss. Notwithstanding their high computational cost, quadratic elements are most appropriate for stress prediction in low resolution trabecular bone FEM. These observations are dependent on trabecular bone micro-architecture, and are more significant for low density sample displaying low trabecular thickness. In conclusion, we found that element formulation is almost important as element size when evaluating trabecular bone mechanical behavior at trabeculae scale. Therefore, element type should be chosen carefully when evaluating trabecular bone behavior using FEM.

Respective roles of organic and mineral components of human cortical bone matrix in micromechanical behavior: an instrumented indentation study.

Bone is a multiscale composite material made of both a type I collagen matrix and a poorly crystalline apatite mineral phase. Due to remodeling activity, cortical bone is made of Bone Structural Units (BSUs) called osteons. Since osteon represents a fundamental level of structural hierarchy, it is important to investigate the relationship between mechanical behavior and tissue composition at this scale for a better understanding of the mechanisms of bone fragility. The aim of this study is to analyze the links between ultrastructural properties and the mechanical behavior of bone tissue at the scale of osteon. Iliac bone biopsies were taken from untreated postmenopausal osteoporotic women, embedded, sectioned and microradiographed to assess the degree of mineralization of bone (DMB). On each section, BSUs of known DMB were indented with relatively high load (~500 mN) to determine local elastic modulus (E), contact hardness (H(c)) and true hardness (H) of several bone lamellae. Crystallinity and collagen maturity were measured by Fourier Transform InfraRed Microspectroscopy (FTIRM) on the same BSUs. Inter-relationships between mechanical properties and ultrastructural components were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. This study showed that elastic deformation was only explained by DMB whereas plastic deformation was more correlated with collagen maturity. Contact hardness, reflecting both elastic and plastic behaviors, was correlated with both DMB and collagen maturity. No relationship was found between crystallinity and mechanical properties at the osteon level.