%0 Journal Article
%T A Model for Bone Strength and Osteoporotic Fractures
%A Gemunu H. Gunaratne
%A Chamith S. Rajapaksa
%A Kevin E. Bassler
%A Kishore K. Mohanty
%A Sunil J. Wimalawansa
%J Quantitative Biology
%D 2000
%I arXiv
%X Inner porous regions play a critical role in the load bearing capability of large bones.We show that an extension of disordered elastic networks [Chung et. al., Phys. Rev. B, {\bf 54}, 15094 (1996)] exhibits analogs of several known mechanical features of bone. The "stress-backbones" and histograms of stress distributions for healthy and weak networks are shown to be qualitatively different. A hereto untested relationship between bone density and bone strength is presented.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0009221v2