Distribution of stresses in a pre-cracked bone specimen

Of concern in the paper is an analysis of the stress-distribution in a specimen of bone having an exterior crack. In conformity to experimental findings, the osseous medium is treated as a composite transversely isotropic material. By considering a numerical example, values of the longitudinal stress at different locations of the bone specimen are obtained by computing the analytically derived expressions, using experimental data for the various physical constants of osseous tissues.