On the Load Share Between Nailing and Bone

Abstract

Intramedullary nailing, which is positioned inside a long bone as a human femur, has been used to fix fractured bones during the healing process, sharing the mechanical loads with bone. To achieve a good fracture consolidation, the available mechanical load has to be sufficient to activate completely the healing process. Thus, the estimation of the level of mechanical load, that is effectively shared between nailing and bone, is an important variable to be accessed. To reach this objective, an analytical model based in mechanics of solids, is presented to describe, at a femur diaphyseal cross section, the load share between bone and nailing. Also, the results of an elastic finite element model is provided as a reference. The results obtained show a good correspondence between models.