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A Probabilistic Fracture Assessment Of Vertebral Cortical Bone, Tarun Goswami, Isaac Mabe

Biomedical, Industrial & Human Factors Engineering Faculty Publications

Cortical bone is a material with a porous structure. The presence of pores creates local stress concentrations and the likelihood of premature failure. Assuming that pores are present in all bone, vertebral endplates, for example, can subside. Subsidence has taken place at rates as high as 77 percent. A computational probabilistic assessment of the pore size distribution and their contribution to the fracture toughness has been presented in this paper. A Monte Carlo simulation was used to develop and assign random pores. Also the model compared crack sizes to the thickness of the cortical bone present as a limiting case. …