Toughening Mechanism of the Bone — Enlightenment from the Microstructure of Goat Tibia

Abstract With the continuous advancement of space exploration missions, the mechanical environment for planetary detectors is becoming increasingly severe. As a result, fatigue, fracture, large deformation and other forms of failures are more likely to occur at the load-bearing structures. As a critical part of the load-bearing structure of a goat, goat tibia has remarkable toughness because of its unique microstructures. In this investigation, firstly, the cortical bone of goat tibia was observed by SEM, and the characteristic microstructures in different regions were identified. Secondly, the cross section of cortical bone was loaded by long-term inplane stress, then the toughness of cortical bone in different regions are obtained and compared based on the orientation and distribution of cracks after the load. Thirdly, a simplified FEM model mimicking typical microstructure of the cortical bone is proposed using cohesive modeling, and then the toughening mechanism of the typical microstructure is validated with numerical simulation. Finally, the toughening mechanisms of cortical bone were discussed according to the SEM observation as well as the numerical simulation. This study of the toughening mechanism of cortical bone can be helpful for the biomimetic design of high-toughness structures.