An examination of the micromechanics of failure of bone and antler by acoustic emission tests and Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy

Microcrack accumulation at different intervals during fatigue testing of compact bone

“…Jepsen et al (1999) showed that the lamellar interface in bone is weak and is the principal site of shear damage formation but the lamellar interface was shown to be highly effective in keeping cracks isolated from each other. Zioupos and Currey (1994) showed that microcracks in bone did interact with the microstructure of the bone and that the grain of the bone constrained their growth directions. They hypothesised that the presence of lamellae influenced the process by which microcracks coalesced but that vascular or other naturally occurring cavities did not initiate microcracking and appeared to deflect microcracks.…”

Informative Potential of Multiscale Observations in Archaeological Biominerals Down to Nanoscale

“…Nothnagel et al (1996) correlated the texture of hydroxyapatite and mechanical properties related to the function of the tusk (Nothnagel et al 1996). The correlation between the orientation of the collagen fibers and the elastic properties was shown by Nalla et al (2003) for elephant ivory and by Currey et al (1994) for narwhal ivory (Nalla 2003;Currey et al 1994). …”

“…As shown in this chapter nature has developed materials with remarkable properties albeit with a limited set of widely available constituents using different strategies. In a way to make the most of the remarkable properties of biominerals, structure-function relations are very interesting subjects to be studied in detail to be able to use the exceptional properties to design new bioinspired materials (Fratzl 2007;Currey et al 1994;Nalla 2003).…”

“…The most distinctive feature of antlers with respect to other bones is their remarkable toughness (Zioupos et al 1994;Currey 1999;Launey et al 2010;Rajaram and Ramanathan 1982). Structural toughening mechanisms at the micrometre scale such as microcracking, crack deflection, crack bridging, visco-plastic flow and combinations of these have been identified for bone (Launey et al 2010;Zioupos et al 1996;Nalla et al 2003;Nalla 2005;Vashishth et al 1997Vashishth et al , 2000Vashishth et al , 2003.…”

Analysis of plastic deformation in cortical bone after insertion of coated and non-coated self-tapping orthopaedic screws

“…Typically, normal transmitted light microscopy is used for damage and crack detection [18,[21][22][23][24][25]; however, reflected light microscopy [26], acoustic emission methods [27], and Raman spectroscopy [28] have also been utilized. In this study, in addition to traditional light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), micro-computed tomography (mCT) is also used to detect and analyse damage formation in cadaver human bone samples after insertion and removal of self-tapping screws.…”