Integrating computational and experimental advances in bone multiscale mechanics

Abstract

Decades of bone research have revealed the intricate hierarchical structures in bone, from the nanoscale building blocks of collagen and mineral to the complex micro-architecture and macro-geometry. Multiscale architecture confers bones their incredible toughness and strength that enables us to move through our daily lives. However, childhood and adult diseases can cause bone fragility and subsequent fractures, leading to disability, and mortality. A foundational understanding of bone mechanics across disparate scales is critical to improve the diagnosis and management of such diseases. At present, we have limited knowledge of how macroscale deformations that occur during everyday movement are transferred down to the nanoscale in order to resist fracture, especially due to historic limitations in measuring nanoscale mechanics experimentally. Recent advances in both experimental and computational tools are equipping researchers to probe the nanoscale for the first time. Here we provide a timely review of existing and next-generation experimental and computational tools and offer new perspectives on how to leverage the strengths of each approach to overcome the limitations of others. We focus on bone structure ranging from atomistic phenomena to microscale mineralized fibril interactions to build a bottom-up understanding of continuum bone mechanics and accelerate research towards impactful clinical translation.