Aging and fracture of human cortical bone and tooth dentin

Mineralized tissues, such as bone and tooth dentin, serve as structural materials in the human body and, as such, have evolved to resist fracture. In assessing their quantitative fracture resistance or toughness, it is important to distinguish between intrinsic toughening mechanisms, which function ahead of the crack tip, such as plasticity in metals, and extrinsic mechanisms, which function primarily behind the tip, such as crack bridging in ceramics. Bone and dentin derive their resistance to fracture principally from extrinsic toughening mechanisms, which have their origins in the hierarchical microstructure of these mineralized tissues. Experimentally, quantification of these toughening mechanisms requires a crack-growth resistance approach, which can be achieved by measuring the crack-driving force (e.g., the stress intensity) as a function of crack extension (“R-curve approach”). Here this methodology is used to study the effect of aging on the fracture properties of human cortical bone and human dentin in order to discern the microstructural origins of toughness in these materials.