Mechanics of Bone-substituting Meta-biomaterials
SM Ahmadi (TU Delft - Biomaterials & Tissue Biomechanics)
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Abstract
One of the main functions of bone is to support the human body mechanically. To fulfil its complex role, bone possesses unique mechanical properties: it is stiff enough to resist deformation while being able to absorb energy.
In this thesis, a comprehensive study has been carried out using analytical methods, numerical methods and experiments to gain a better understanding of these structures. A wide range of porous structures with several topological designs and material types were considered. The quasi-static and fatigue behaviour of those AM porous biomaterials were determined experimentally and were compared with analytical solutions and computational (i.e. finite element modelling) results. The quasi-static mechanical properties and fatigue S-N curves were analyzed both in absolute and in normalized terms. In the case of quasi-static mechanical properties, normalization was performed with respect to the mechanical properties of the bulk (i.e. matrix) material from which the porous biomaterials were made while stress levels in the S-N curves were normalized with respect to the yield or plateau stress of the porous biomaterial. The results of this thesis show AM porous metallic biomaterials could mimic several aspects of bone tissue properties and are therefore promising candidates as bone substituting implants.