Chicken Bone Stiffness and Elastic Modulus Testing: Differences in Axial and Flexural Properties

 

Name: Orrin G. Meyers

Class: BE 210

 

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The stiffness of bone when calculated from tensile loading with the Instron 4444 will be significantly greater than that of bone tested in flexural bending with a three point bending test. Examining bone mechanical properties will help characterize what types of forces on a bone will be most likely to cause fracture in chicken bones, and by inference, human bone. This experiment will illuminate the magnitude of differences required for a force to cause femur fracture from different loading points and angles by examining the extremes: axial and flexural (longitudinal and tangential).

 

An additional hypothesis of this experiment is that the percent error from accepted of the elastic modulus during axial loading will be significantly greater than that of three point bending tests. Error will be characterized from the accepted values of 12.8 GPa for radial testing and 17.7 for longitudinal testing. Examining the error in different protocols that test mechanical properties allow researchers to make an educated decision about which protocol is best suited for their particular testing situation when using an Instron 4444 apparatus.