Electro-mechanical remodelling of bones

Abstract

This paper is mainly concerned with an electro-mechanical model for living bones with the hope of explaining the remodelling process in bone, which is vital for bone healing and regeneration. In developing the model, it is assumed that a wet bone is composed of a charged fluid (electrolytes and bone salts) and the solid bone matrix which has the piezoelectric property. Based on this simplifying assumptions, the balance laws and constitutive relations are derived for such a mixture, and for the illustration of present model, an example problem concerning the longitudinal wave propagation in wet bones is studied and possible application of it in bone healing is indicated.