3.10 Finite Element Analysis in Bone Research: A Computational Method Relating Structure to Mechanical Function

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-803581-8.09798-8Get rights and content

Abstract

Bone is probably the most frequently investigated biological material and finite element analysis (FEA) is the computational tool most commonly used for the analysis of bone biomechanical function. FEA has been used in bone research for more than 30 years and has had a substantial impact on our understanding of the complex behavior of bone. Bone is structured in a hierarchical way covering many length scales and this chapter reflects this hierarchical organization. In particular, the focus is on the applications of FEA for understanding the relationship between bone structure and its mechanical function at specific hierarchical levels. Depending on the hierarchical level, different issues have been investigated with FEA ranging from more clinically oriented topics related to bone quality (eg, predicting bone strength and fracture risk) to more fundamental problems dealing with the mechanical aspects of biological processes (eg, stress and strain around osteocyte lacunae) as well as with the micromechanical behavior of bone at its ultrastructure. A better understanding of the relationship between structure and mechanical function is expected to be important for the current trends in (bio)materials design, where the structure of biological materials is considered as a possible source of inspiration, as well as for more successful approaches in the prevention and treatment of age- and disease-related fractures.

References (0)

Cited by (21)

  • How is mechanobiology involved in bone regenerative medicine?

    2022, Tissue and Cell
    Citation Excerpt :

    The combination of mathematical models and computer simulation methods has created many opportunities to better understand the mechanical behavior of bone tissue. Finite element method (FE) is the most common numerical method used to simulate bone that has been used at various scales of organs, tissues and cell surface (Oliveira, 2021; Ruffoni and van Lenthe, 2017; Verbruggen et al., 2012). Wolff's Law is the first concept to describe the relationship between shape and function in bones (Wolff, 1892).

  • Limit analysis of human proximal femur

    2021, Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials
    Citation Excerpt :

    See e.g. Cowin (2001), Helgason et al. (2008), Klika (2011), Oftadeh et al. (2015), Martin et al. (2015), Murphy et al. (2016), Bouxsein et al. (2020) and references therein. Since the early seventies, see e.g. Huiskes and Chao (1983), Zysset et al. (2013), Ruffoni and van Lenthe (2017), Kluess et al. (2019), Solórzano et al. (2020), numerical tools grounded on different constitutive assumptions have been also proposed. As well known, when dealing with the evaluation of the mechanical response of a structure, or a structural element, the fundamental ingredients that enter the evaluation are the shape, the constituent material, the boundary and loading conditions.

  • Multiscale modeling of bone tissue mechanobiology

    2021, Bone
    Citation Excerpt :

    The combination of mathematical models and computer simulation methods opened many possibilities to advance in the understanding of mechanobiological behavior of bone tissue. The most common numerical method that has been used to simulate bone is Finite Element (FE) Method, which has been used at the different scales: organ [35], tissue [36] and cell level [37,38]. Only in particular cases, other numerical methods have been used, such as, boundary element method [39] or meshless methods [40] among others.

  • Joining soft tissues to bone: Insights from modeling and simulations

    2021, Bone Reports
    Citation Excerpt :

    Usually, these models are computationally inexpensive and can capture fairly well the overall stress-strain behavior at the tissue level. The obtained constitutive relations can then be implemented into continuum level finite element (FE) models (Ruffoni and van Lenthe, 2017), therefore accounting for more complex geometries and heterogeneous tissues (Thomopoulos et al., 2006; Gasser et al., 2006). However, continuum approaches cannot resolve mechanical events at the level of individual fibers (or at the fiber-matrix interface).

  • Effect of osteoporosis treatment agents on the cortical bone osteocyte microenvironment in adult estrogen-deficient, osteopenic rats

    2018, Bone Reports
    Citation Excerpt :

    The amount of strain actually transmitted to the embedded osteocyte is not known, but would also likely have similar effects across each of the models. Meanwhile, until such FE models become available, the state-of-the-art FE model applied here has been validated and thus supplies meaningful new information about the current topic (Ruffoni and van Lenthe, 2017). In clinical practice today, many patients are cycled through a number of bone active medications for the treatment of osteoporosis over many years.

View all citing articles on Scopus

Change History: June 2016. D. Ruffoni and G.H. van Lenthe updated the text of the entire article, added new Fig. 12 and Section 3.10.6.

This is an update of D. Ruffoni and G.H. van Lenthe, 3.307 – Finite Element Analysis in Bone Research: A Computational Method Relating Structure to Mechanical Function. In Comprehensive Biomaterials, edited by Paul Ducheyne, Elsevier, Oxford, 2011, pp. 91–111.

View full text