Elastic modulus of hard tissues.

Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel. benny.bar-on@weizmann.ac.il

Journal of biomechanics 2012 Feb 23

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This work aims at evaluating the elastic modulus of hard biological tissues by considering their staggered platelet micro-structure. An analytical expression for the effective modulus along the stagger direction is formulated using three non-dimensional structural variables. Structures with a single staggered hierarchy (e.g. collagen fibril) are first studied and predictions are compared with the experimental results and finite element simulations from the literature. A more complicated configuration, such as an array of fibrils, is analyzed next. Finally, a mechanical model is proposed for tooth dentin, in which variations in the multi-scale structural hierarchy are shown to significantly affect the macroscopic mechanical properties. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.