Orthotropic bone remodeling: case of plane stresses

Cancellous bone is constituted by a porous solid matrix filled with fluid. Matrix microstructure gives bone most of its mechanical strength properties. In our macroscopic approach, bone is seen as a continuous medium with a local (at our scale) time-dependent linearly elastic orthotropic behavior. Remodeling consists, by matrix material apposition or resorption, in microstructure modifications in order to optimize its mechanical characteristics. The proposed model is built on a time iterative procedure where the compliance tensor evolves such that, depending on the applied stresses, principal strains tend to fall within an admissible domain. The suggested remodeling laws in this work modify the elasticity “constants” as well as the orthotropy directions. The first results presented here correspond to the plane stresses case.