Vol. 5, No. 2, 2010

Download this article
Download this article For screen
For printing
Recent Issues

Volume 19
Issue 4, 541–746
Issue 4, 541–572
Issue 3, 303–540
Issue 2, 157–302
Issue 1, 1–156

Volume 18, 5 issues

Volume 17, 5 issues

Volume 16, 5 issues

Volume 15, 5 issues

Volume 14, 5 issues

Volume 13, 5 issues

Volume 12, 5 issues

Volume 11, 5 issues

Volume 10, 5 issues

Volume 9, 5 issues

Volume 8, 8 issues

Volume 7, 10 issues

Volume 6, 9 issues

Volume 5, 6 issues

Volume 4, 10 issues

Volume 3, 10 issues

Volume 2, 10 issues

Volume 1, 8 issues

The Journal
About the journal
Ethics and policies
Peer-review process
 
Submission guidelines
Submission form
Editorial board
 
Subscriptions
 
ISSN 1559-3959 (online)
ISSN 1559-3959 (print)
 
Author index
To appear
 
Other MSP journals
Computational studies of collagen fibril biominerals using a virtual internal bond model with extrinsic length scale

Ganesh Thiagarajan and Kavita Deshmukh

Vol. 5 (2010), No. 2, 213–226
Abstract

Mineralized type-I collagen fibrils are made up of mineral hydroxyapatite and type-I collagen and are known to have good mechanical properties. Hydroxyapatite by itself is stiffer and collagen is relatively weaker. The development of a multiscale virtual internal bond model (VIB) used to model the material behavior and failure of such biocomposites was described in an earlier paper by the authors. An explicit finite element based framework using a two parameter fracture-constitutive VIB model, with an extrinsic length scale, was used in this study.

The model used in this study is a nano sized dahlite mineral crystal commonly found in collagen fibrils. Two important computational implementation characteristics are presented here; namely the effect of a material parameter used in the VIB model and the effect of thickness of the material at the nanoscale on the failure behavior. The effect of the thickness is studied in order to demonstrate the extrinsic length scale capability of the VIB model at nano length scales.

Keywords
finite element analysis, collagen, biomineralization, nanomechanical behavior, dentin, parametric studies
Milestones
Received: 7 November 2008
Revised: 13 August 2009
Accepted: 17 August 2009
Published: 30 August 2010
Authors
Ganesh Thiagarajan
School of Computing and Engineering
University of Missouri
Kansas City, MO 64110
United States
Kavita Deshmukh
School of Computing and Engineering
University of Missouri
Kansas City, MO 64110
United States