INFLUENCE OF A NOTCH ON THE PIEZOELECTRIC VOLTAGES IN BONE

Fatigue damage is believed to play an importance role in bone remodeling. The stress near the tip of a micro-crack is much higher than the other areas. And the distribution of stress in those areas will also change due to the crack, which will result in the change of voltage in these areas owing to the bone’s piezoelectric property. Hence the knowledge of the changes of the voltage will be of benefit to understanding the self-healing mechanism of bone tissues. In this paper, the piezoelectric voltages around artificial notches are investigated to simulate the micro crack in dry bones. The results show that the piezoelectric voltage decrease after a notch is cut in a specimen though the normal stress resulting from the crack around the notch tip increases sharply. Then the analysis shows that it is the shear stress instead of the normal stress that determines the quantity of electric charge near a crack tip.