Stress fracture of bone under physiological multiaxial cyclic loading: Activity-based predictive models

Abstract

While it is known that excessive accumulation of fatigue damage from daily activities contributes to fracture, a model of bone failure under physiologically relevant multiaxial cyclic loading needs to be developed in order to develop effective management strategies for stress or fatigue fractures. The role of strain-induced damage from repetitive loading is a strong candidate for such a model, as cycles of mechanical loading leading to failure can be measured directly. However, this approach has been limited by the restrictions of uniaxial loading models, which often overestimates the fatigue life of bone and suggests that bone will only break well beyond the realistic limits of exercise. To address this gap and develop a physiologically relevant model, our study leverages the power of four commonly used engineering failure criteria as a model for multiaxial loading using a cohort of human tibiae from cadaveric donors (age range 21–85 years old). Four failure criteria (Von Mises, Tsai-Wu, Findley critical plane, and maximum shear strain) were found to be effective in vitro models of tibial fracture when age groups of donors were combined (r² > 0.84) and stratified (younger: 21–52-years-old versus older: 57–85-years-old) (r² > 0.83) (p < 0.001). Each failure criterion displayed distinctly lower fatigue curves for the older age group. The maximum shear strain model was used to determine the efficacy of this approach to predict fatigue fractures in humans using published in vivo data from human volunteers. Consistent with in vivo observations in general population, the model demonstrated failure at 5000 to 200,000 loading cycles depending on activities such as jumping, sprinting, and walking, with a 3-fold reduction of fatigue life in older donors. These findings dramatically improve estimates of fatigue life under repetitive loading and demonstrate how age-related changes in bone significantly increase its propensity for fatigue-induced fractures.