Effect of Compressive Straining on Nanoindentation Elastic Modulus of Trabecular Bone

Trabecular bone with its porous structure is an important compressive load bearing member. Different structural factors such as porosity, non-homogeneous deformation, varying trabeculae thickness, connectivity, and nanoscale (10 nm to 1 μm) to macroscale (~0.1 mm to 10 mm) composition hierarchy determine the failure properties of trabecular bone. While the above factors have important bearing on bone properties, an understanding of how the local nanoscale properties change at different macroscale compressive strain levels can be important to develop an understanding of how bone fails. In the present work, such analyses are performed on bovine femoral trabecular bone samples derived from a single animal. Analyses focus on measuring nanoindentation elastic moduli at three distinct levels of compressive strains in the bone samples: (1) when the samples are not loaded; (2) after the samples have been loaded to a strain level just before apparent yielding and the macroscale compression test is stopped; and (3) after the samples have been compressed to a strain level after apparent yielding and the macroscale compression test is stopped. Nanoindentation elastic modulus values are two orders of magnitude higher than the macroscale compressive elastic modulus values of all samples. A high variability in macroscale compressive elastic modulus values is observed because of porous architecture and small sample size. Nanoindentation elastic modulus values show a progressive reduction with increase in the extent of macroscale compressive deformation. Apparent yielding has a significant effect on this trend. The decrease in nanoindentation modulus value for all samples accelerates from approximately 20% before yielding to approximately 60% after yielding in comparison to the nanoindentation modulus values at 0% strain level. The level of variation in the predicted nanoindentation modulus values is the lowest for uncompressed samples (~16–18%). However, with increase in the extent of compression, the level of variation increases. It varied between 50% and 90% for the samples tested after yielding showing a widespread heterogeneity in local nanoscale structural order after apparent yielding. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) observations suggest that apparent yielding significantly destroys local nanoscale structural order. However, quantitative results suggest that a significant residual nanoscale stiffness varying from 5 GPa to 8 GPa among different samples still remains for possible repair facilitation.