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Microstructural fatigue fracture behavior of glycated cortical bone

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A Correction to this article was published on 13 December 2023

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Abstract

The current study aims to simulate fatigue microdamage accumulation in glycated cortical bone with increased advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) using a phase field fatigue framework. We link the material degradation in the fracture toughness of cortical bone to the high levels of AGEs in this tissue. We simulate fatigue fracture in 2D models of cortical bone microstructure extracted from human tibias. The results present that the mismatch between the critical energy release rate of microstructural features (e.g., osteons and interstitial tissue) can alter crack initiation and propagation patterns. Moreover, the high AGEs content through the increased mismatch ratio can cause the activation or deactivation of bone toughening mechanisms under cyclic loading. The fatigue fracture simulations also show that the lifetime of diabetic cortical bone samples can be dependent on the geometry of microstructural features and the mismatch ratio between the features. Additionally, the results indicate that the trapped cracks in cement lines in the diabetic cortical microstructure can prevent further crack growth under cyclic loading. The present findings show that alterations in the materials heterogeneity of microstructural features can change the fatigue fracture response, lifetime, and fragility of cortical bone with high AGEs contents.

Graphical abstract

Cortical bone models are created from microscopy images taken from the cortical cross-section of human tibias. Increased glycation contents in the cortical bone sample can change the crack growth trajectories.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the high-performance computing resources (Picotte: the Drexel Cluster) and support at Drexel University. We are grateful to Timothy O. Josephson and Jason P. Moore for the sectioning, staining, and imaging of bone samples. We also thank Dr. Lamya Karim and Taraneh Rezaee at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth for providing and cutting the cortical bone samples. We further thank Dr. Theresa A. Freeman for providing us with the laboratory facilities of Thomas Jefferson University. We also thank Mr. Amirreza Sadighi for his helpful comments on the manuscript writing style.

Funding

This study was supported by faculty start-up funding from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics at Drexel University. The development of the fatigue fracture framework is also supported by the NSF CAREER Award CMMI-2143422.

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    Ebrahim Maghami & Ahmad Najafi

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  1. Ebrahim Maghami
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Correspondence to Ahmad Najafi.

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Maghami, E., Najafi, A. Microstructural fatigue fracture behavior of glycated cortical bone. Med Biol Eng Comput 61, 3021–3034 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-023-02901-3

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