Furin, I. (2015). A new nanoindentation protocol for identifying the elasticity of undamaged extracellular bone tissue [Diploma Thesis, Technische Universität Wien]. reposiTUm. https://doi.org/10.34726/hss.2015.33865
E202 - Institut für Mechanik der Werkstoffe und Strukturen
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Date (published):
2015
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Number of Pages:
56
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Keywords:
elasticity of undamaged extracellular bone tissue
en
Abstract:
For the determination of the Young's modulus of bone tissues several methods are widely in use, among them quasi-static mechanical tests, ultrasound tests, and nanoindentation tests. However, the key question of how an elastic modulus can be reliably retrieved from such tests, is surprisingly unsettled. In this Master's thesis, a new method for determination of the elastic modulus of extracellular bone matrix from very many nanoindentation results is developed, based on an earlier contribution in the field of brittle ceramics used in bone tissue engineering (Kariem et al., 2015). 576 nanoindentation tests were performed on carefully polished bovine femoral bone samples, and the results were statistically analyzed,by fitting a number of Gaussian distribution functions to the histogram made up by all indent-specific elastic moduli, each of them being retrieved from Oliver and Pharr's solution for the elastic half space. The fitting procedure was based on an evolutionary algorithm (Weicker, 2007; Jaindl et al., 2009), and revealed the existence of several material phases with distinct expected values for their corresponding elastic moduli, according to the premises of the statistical or grid nanoindentation technique (Ulm et al, 2007). The stiffest of these moduli refers to the undamaged elastic modulus of extracellular bone tissue, while all other moduli reflect influences of microcracks in the vicinity of the indent, or directly branching off from the microcracks; this was explicitly confirmed by a preliminary nanoindentation test series performed under a Scanning electron microscope (SEM). The value obtained with our new method for the undamaged extracellular femoral bovine bone matrix, amounting to 31.4±2.5 GPa, appears remarkably well to the results obtained from unloading quasi-static compression tests on single-micro-sized micropillars which were SEM-FIB-milled from the same type of bone (Luczynski et al., 2015); and to predictions of a carefully validated micromechanical model for bone (Morin and Hellmich, 2014). This is regarded as major step toward reliable determination of the elastic properties of bone