Abstract
The study describes the acoustic emission (AE) activity during human femur tissue fracture. The specimens were fractured in a bending-torsion loading pattern with concurrent monitoring by two AE sensors. The number of recorded signals correlates well with the applied load providing the onset of micro-fracture at approximately one sixth of the maximum load. Furthermore, waveform frequency content and rise time are related to the different modes of fracture (bending of femur neck or torsion of diaphysis). The importance of the study lies mainly in two disciplines. One is that, although femurs are typically subjects of surgical repair in humans, detailed monitoring of the fracture with AE will enrich the understanding of the process in ways that cannot be achieved using only the mechanical data. Additionally, from the point of view of monitoring techniques, applying sensors used for engineering materials and interpreting the obtained data pose additional difficulties due to the uniqueness of the bone structure.
Highlights
Acoustic emission (AE) is a non-invasive technique used in several situations to monitor the fracture behaviour of different types of materials
This paper studies acoustic emission (AE) activity during fracture of human femur bone tissue
Results show that AE activity, as monitored by PZT sensors attached on the surface of the specimens, can be used to determine the start of cracking which occurs much earlier than macroscopic fracture
Summary
Acoustic emission (AE) is a non-invasive technique used in several situations to monitor the fracture behaviour of different types of materials. Since the background is not strong in the field (compared to the exhaustive studies in concrete, metal or other engineering materials), it is not easy to explain the trends or the values of AE parameters Despite the difficulties, these studies are very significant, since bone fractures and fractures of the femur (hip fracture) are a very common cause of eventual loss of life, or at least loss of quality of life, for millions of aged people [20]). Specimens that obviously fractured with different patterns demonstrate major changes in their AE activity This is in accordance with previous studies, where it was shown that different fracture orientations relatively to the osteons resulted in different fracture toughness [29], implying that monitoring of the released energy could record these changes during fracture. Discussion extends to the correlation between AE parameters and the thickness of the cortical shell
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