Evaluation of fatigue crack growing in cortical bone using the BEM

An effective and efficient methodology for the fatigue cracks growth evaluation in human cortical bone is presented. The solution is based on the elastic linear fracture mechanics. For the evaluation of cracked boundary the dual boundary element method is used. The solution is based on the development and application of a computational algorithm to obtain stresses and displacements on the boundary and the crack-tip stress intensity factor for elements under fatigue load. For the fatigue regimen, the principles of Paris's law with cracks increments are employed. Finally, the results in cortical bone are compared with available experimental results.