About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2026 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Biological Materials Science
|
| Presentation Title |
Bone Resists Fatigue Through Crack Deceleration at the Fibril Scale |
| Author(s) |
Ottman Tertuliano |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Ottman Tertuliano |
| Abstract Scope |
Bone endures millions of loading cycles over a lifetime by accumulating damage at a rate slow enough to allow cell-mediated repair, yet the mechanisms that delay fatigue failure remain poorly understood. While prior studies have focused on the fatigue response of bone’s macroscale architecture, the role of its nanoscale structure in resisting fatigue has remained experimentally inaccessible. Here, we combine in situ fatigue loading with synchrotron X-ray topography and radiography to directly observe crack propagation in human bone at 20-nm 100 ms spatiotemporal resolution. We find that mineralized collagen fibrils decelerate crack growth by branching along the fibril axes, while orthogonal cracks are intermittently slowed by nanoscale compositional gradients at interfibrillar interfaces. These mechanisms suppress damage accumulation under physiological loads by an order of magnitude. Our findings uncover a new toughening strategy at the nanoscale, providing insight into how bone’s hierarchy bridges the timescales between mechanical damage and biological repair. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Biomaterials, Mechanical Properties, |