High-Speed Cutting of Synthetic Trabecular Bone– A Combined Experimental-Computational Investigation
Orthopaedic surgical cutting instruments are required to generate sufficient forces to penetrate bone tissue, while minimizing the risk of thermal and mechanical damage to the surrounding environment. This study presents a combined experimental-computational approach to deter-mine relationships between key cutting parameters and overall cutting performance of a polyu-rethane-based synthetic trabecular bone analogue under orthogonal cutting conditions. An ex-perimental model of orthogonal cutting was developed, whereby an adaptable cutting tool fix-ture driven by a servo-hydraulic uniaxial test machine was used to carry out cutting tests on Sawbone® trabecular bone analogues. A computational model of the orthogonal cutting process was developed using Abaqus/Explicit, whereby an Isotropic Hardening Crushable Foam elas-tic-plastic model was used to capture the complex post-yield behaviour of the synthetic trabecu-lar bone. It was found that lower tool rake-angles resulted in the formation of larger discontin-uous chips and higher cutting forces, while higher rake angles tended to lead to more continu-ous chip formation and lower cutting forces. The computational modelling framework provided excellent predictions of both chip formation and axial cutting forces over the wide range of cut-ting parameters, when compared to experimental observations. This represents the first experi-mentally-validated computational modelling framework for orthogonal cutting of trabecular bone and excellent potential to be applied to more complex three-dimensional cutting processes in the future.