Honors Theses

Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Tejas Pandya

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

Bone is the primary structural element of mammalian animals. It plays a critical role in support, strength, and resilience, and has been the subject of many investigations into its material properties. The high strain rate behavior of bone has remained relatively unexplored, however, and its properties under dynamic loads perpendicular to the diaphysis of the bone are somewhat poorly understood. Bone is an anisotropic material and displays different properties depending on its orientation during testing. It is known that bone is weaker under a compressive load in the transverse direction, but the relationship has not been tested at high strain rates. A bovine femur was obtained and specimens were cut from it to be tested in a Split Hopkinson-Kolsky Pressure Bar. The test results were analyzed and compared to the literature on bovine bone tested under various other parameters. Testing found the samples to be significantly weaker than their longitudinally-cut equivalents, qualitatively confirming the anisotropic model.

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