The influence of some biomechanical factors on endochondral ossification on long bone

Abstract

It is believed that the formation of endochondral ossification and the construction of the initial bone architecture are affected by some biomechanical factors. In 1987, Carter et al. have proposed a new set of rules in which mechanical stresses are thought to influence endochondral ossification and bone remodeling in the developing skeleton. Carter and Wong later proposed a theoretical time-dependent model of endochondral ossification and simulated the sequence of the appearance of morphological structures. The objectives of this study are to simulate the process of the bone growth and discuss the influence of some biomechanical factors on endochondral ossification on long bone. The discussed factors include load cases, empirical constant k and different mechanical stimulus related to bone growth. We conducted three-dimensional FE analysis of the model used by Carter and Wong. The results simulated showed that the empirical constant k 0.5 is reasonable, the bone growth equation with the strain energy density as the mechanical stimulus is more reasonable. © 2010 International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.