Effects of Freeze-Thaw Cycling on Material Properties of Cancellous Cervine Bone as Characterized by Nanoindentation

Cancellous bone is an important load-bearing component of whole bone, and due to the plate-and-rod nature of trabeculae, small-scale testing is required to measure material parameters for use in modern analytic techniques such as finite element modeling [1, 2]. These material properties are measurable via nanoindentation techniques. During nanoindentation, the indenter tip is forced into the surface of the material while the applied load and tip displacement are monitored. Using these data, along with the tip’s cross-sectional area, mechanical properties are determined. Dynamic testing quantifies viscoelastic response and can obtain material response parameters such as storage and loss moduli. During dynamic testing, a low magnitude sinusoidal force is superimposed on a constant static force. The displacement response is measured at the same frequency as the applied oscillating force, and the resulting phase lag is related to material damping [3].