Time-frequency analysis to detect bone fracture in impact biomechanics. Application to the thorax.

Experimental testing is a major source of data to quantify the tolerance of the human body to impact and to develop protection strategies. Correlating the time of rib fractures with the kinematics of the occupant and the action of safety systems would provide valuable data for assessing safety systems and developing injury risk functions. However, methods for determining rib fractures timing are not yet fully developed. Time-history analysis of data from multiple strain gauges mounted directly to ribs is commonly used for this purpose, but this method is not very sensitive and the time and cost required to instrument the rib cage with more than 100 strain gauges is prohibitive for many applications. In this study a new approach based on time-scale analysis of signals obtained from piezoelectric transducers (PZT) is reported. A post-mortem human subject was instrumented with four PZT on ribs 3 and 7 bilaterally and exposed to lateral blunt impacts to the shoulder and the chest. The fractures were documented after each test, and a criterion was developed to process the PZT signals. The criterion consists in detecting in the PZT signal the onset of a high frequency transient generated by the fracture of a rib using the continuous wavelet transform. Two thresholds were successfully determined to detect fractures that occurred (1) on an instrumented rib, and (2) on the adjacent rib. Further development of this method should allow the detection of all rib fractures using only a few PZT.

A micromechanical model to predict damage and failure in biological tissues. Application to the ligament-to-bone attachment in the human knee joint.

Computational models are developed in injury biomechanics to assess lesions in biological tissues based on mechanical measurements. The linear mechanics of fracture theory (LMFT) is a common approach to establish injuries based on thresholds (such as force or strain thresholds) which are straightforward to implement and computationally efficient. However, LMFT does not apply to non-linear heterogeneous materials and does not have the ability to predict failure onset. This paper proposes the cohesive zone model theory (CZMT) as an alternative. CZMT focuses on the development of behaviour laws for crack initiation and propagation at an interface that apply within a fibrous material or at the interface between materials. With the view of evaluating CZMT for biological tissues, the model developed by Raous et al. [1999. A consistent model coupling adhesion, friction and unilateral contact. Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng., 177, 383-399] was applied to the ligament-to-bone interface in the human knee joint. This model accounts for adhesion, friction and damage at the interface and provides a smooth transition from total adhesion to complete failure through the intensity of adhesion variable. A 2D finite element model was developed to mimic previous experiments, and the model parameters were determined using a dichotomy method. The model showed good results by its ability to predict damage. The extension to a 3D geometry, with an inverse problem approach, is, however, required to better estimate the model parameters values. Although it is computationally costly, CZMT supplements the improvements achieved in microimaging techniques to support the development of micro/macro approaches in biomechanical modelling.

Comparison of compact bone failure under two different loading rates: experimental and modelling approaches.

Understanding the mechanical behaviour of bones up to failure is necessary for diagnosis and prevention of accident and trauma. As far as we know, no authors have yet studied the tensile behaviour of compact bone including failure under dynamic loadings (1 m/s). The originality of this study comes from not only the analysis of compact bone failure under dynamic loadings, the results of which are compared to those obtained under quasi-static loadings, but also the development of a statistical model. We developed a protocol using three different devices. Firstly, an X-ray scanner to analyse bone density, secondly, a common tensile device to perform quasi-static experiments, and thirdly, a special device based upon a hydraulic cylinder to perform dynamic tests. For all the tests, we used the same sample shape which took into account the brittleness of the compact bone. We first performed relaxation and hysteresis tests followed by tensile tests up to failure. Viscous and plastic effects were not relevant to the compact bone behaviour so its behaviour was considered elastic and brittle. The bovine compact bone was three to four times more brittle under a dynamic load than under a quasi-static one. Numerically, a statistical model, based upon the Weibull theory, is used to predict the failure stress in compact bone.