Modeling of Diffuse Damage Near Micro Cracks in Human Cortical Bone

Haversian cortical bone is a mineralised tissue that undergoes micro damage under daily exercise. Micro damage can either be identiable by light microscopy as microcracks or be more diffuse and difficult to visualise. Bone is maintained by mechano-sensitive cells called osteocytes located throughout the tissue. However the local mechanical stimulations on the cells are not precisely quantied. A dual experimental and numerical approach is presented to measure the in situ stress field produced by microcracks in human bone. Using the strain energy balance, the stress eld is reconstructed in the vicinity of quasi-static microcracks that are advancing in the explicit bone morphology captured by digital image correlation. The stress eld reveals the presence of diffuse damage near microcracks in agreement with experimental observations in the literature.