Modeling and simulation of osteoporosis and fracture of trabecular bone by meshless method

Osteoporosis is a skeletal disease characterized by a decrease in bone strength as a result of a decrease of bone mass and a deterioration of bone microstructure. In this work, the imaging data of a CT scanned human femoral neck trabecular bone is directly converted into a meshless model. A model is developed to analyze osteoporosis process. A fracture criterion and the corresponding post-failure are proposed for trabecular bone. The fracture process is modeled and simulated. The simulations show that the fracture stress is not a monotonically decreasing function in the process of fracture, and the microstructure of trabecular bone has a positive effect in preventing progressive failure. The approach in this work may be used to understand the osteoporosis-related fracture and the bone density–strength relationship, and to serve as a way for prognosis of osteoporosis.