Question

Upon discussion of the tensile data with other engineers you are advised that nanoindentation testing of the human cortical bone may be useful. What motivation is there for using nanoindentation for determining bone mechanical properties? Your answer should be no more than 250 words and you should cite any reference(s) you use to support your arguments.

Answer 1

Dear Student ,

* Bone tissues is of two types generally : Trabecular and Cortical. Trabecular bone is highly porous. Cortical bone is dense and found on the surface of the bones.

* Measurement of mechanical properties of the bone are important for the determination of the stresses and strains , exerted at the cellular level when a load is applied.

* Also measuring the microscopic mechanical properties of bone helps in understanding the etiology and pathogenesis of the underlying bone diseases.

* Nano level mechanical properties of bone are also needed in pharmaceutical industries now a days as drug therapies have some effect on bone mineral content and strength.

* Nanoindentation experiments can be performed using Hysitron Triboindenter with a two axis capacitive transducer.

* By using Nanoindentation, we can examine indentation depth, time delay, repetitive loading,displacement rate,etc.

* It produces measures of lamellar elastic modulus of human cortical bone.

* The coagulation correlation between hardness and elastic modulus can be known. Young's modulus can be measured.

* The most common method used to analyze the Nanoindentation technique's data is Oliver and Pharr mechanical method. Using this method, the relation between the mechanical response of the bone based intrinsic heterogenesity can be found out and there are many more such applications possible.

So, Nanoindentation is one of the best methods for determining the bone mechanical properties.

Hope you are clear... ?

(Note: If you want to know about the Method of Nanoindentation in specific, feel free to ask)