BEHAVIOUR OF HUMAN FEMUR BONE UNDER COMPRESSIVE LOADS-AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Abstract

The femur is the largest, strongest and most voluminous tubular bone in the human body. This is the principal load-bearing bone in the lower extremity. Femoral fractures are among the most common major injuries that an orthopedic surgeon will be required to treat. Evaluation of femur fractures using clinical data is confounded by multiple patient and fracture specific factors making it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions, despite the inclusion of large number of patient data. Therefore the biomechanical testing of the femur bone plays a vital role in the evaluation the femoral fractures. This experimental investigation focuses on the evaluation of hardness and compressive strength, the damage characterizing parameters in femur. The bones were tested under both the pre notched(cracked)and unnotched conditions.cIn order to evaluate the influence of the loading type, different regions of femur were loaded under hardness indentation and compressive loads. The precise load/deflection data were acquired through specially designed electronically controlled LVDT and load cells.  The results have shown the femur strength is extremely variable with respect to the different regions. The compressive strength has shown maximum dependency on the matrix of the femur and its hardness. The macroscopic observations of the fractured specimens have shown that, the chipping of the bone, longitudinal cracks and the multiple cracks in femur are most dangerous.