Experimental and numerical analysis of Izod impact test of cortical bone tissue

Bones can only sustain loads until a certain limit, beyond which they fail. Usually, the reasons for bone fracture are traumatic falls, sports injuries, and engagement in transport or industrial accidents. A proper treatment of bones and prevention of their fracture can be supported by in-depth understanding of deformation and fracture behavior of this tissue in such dynamic events. In this paper, a combination of experimental and numerical analysis was carried out in order to comprehend the fracture behavior of cortical bone tissue. Experimental tests were performed to study the transient dynamic behavior of cortical bone tissue under impact bending loading. The variability of absorbed energy for different cortex positions and notch depths was studied using Izod impact tests. Also, Extended Finite-Element Method implemented into the commercial finite-element software Abaqus was used to simulate the crack initiation and growth processes in a cantilever beam of cortical bone exposed to impact loading using the Izod loading scheme. The simulation results show a good agreement with the experimental data.