Inhomogeneous material property assignment and ori-entation definition of transverse isotropy of femur

The finite element method has been increasingly adopted to study the biomechanical behavior of biologic structures. Once the finite element mesh has been generated from CT data set, the assignment of bone tissue’s material properties to each element is a fundamental step in the generation of individualized or subject-specific finite element models. The aim of this work is to simulate the inhomogeneous and anisotropic material properties of femur using the finite element method. A program is developed to read a CT data set as well as the finite element mesh generated from it, and to assign to each element of the mesh the material properties derived from the bone tissue density at the element location. Moreover, for cancellous bone in femoral neck and cortical bone in femoral stem, the principal orientations of transverse isotropy were defined based on the trabecular structures and the haversian system respectively.