Compressive fatigue behavior of bovine trabecular bone.

We studied the fatigue behavior of bovine trabecular bone specimens under stress control using a sinusoidal uniaxial compressive load profile with a frequency of 2 Hz. The stress range was determined from the corresponding initial global platen-to-platen strain range, where the maximum initial strain was between 0.8 and 2.1% and the minimum strain was 0.6%. The local strain distribution was measured on the same type of specimen by affixing glass spheres and photographing them in the unloaded and loaded positions using multiple exposures. The number of cycles to failure (defined as a 5% decrease in secant modulus) was strongly correlated with the initial global maximum strain (r2 = 0.78) and ranged from 20 cycles at 2.1% strain to 400,000 cycles at 0.8% strain. All of the fatigue specimens showed a region of transverse failure approximately 1 mm from the end of the specimen. Microscopic examination of the failure zones revealed two failure modes: a straight transverse brittle-like fracture through the trabeculae, most often found in trabeculae transverse to the loading direction, and buckling-like failure, common in oblique trabeculae, involving bending and splitting. The local strain increased towards the ends of the specimens to a value 2-4 times that in the middle. Modulus degradation with the number of cycles was distinctively different for high-cycle and low-cycle fatigue, suggesting the possibility that both creep and damage accumulation contribute to fatigue failure of trabecular bone.