A polycaprolactone bio-nanocomposite bone substitute fabricated for femoral fracture approaches: Molecular dynamic and micromechanical Investigation

The application of porous bio-nanocomposites polymer has greatly increased in the treatment of boneabnormalities and bone fracture. Therefore, predicting the mechanical properties of these bio-nanocompositesare very important prior to their fabrication. Investigation of mechanical properties like (elasticmodulus and hardness) is very costly and time-consuming in experimental tests. Therefore, researchershave focused on mathematical methods and new theories to predict the artificial synthetic bone for orthopedicapplication. In this paper, porous bio-nanocomposites synthetic bone including nanocrystallineHydroxyapatite (HA) nanoparticles and Titanium oxide (TiO2) containing (0 wt%, 5 wt%, 10 wt%, and 15wt% of TiO2) as reinforcements and the biocompatible polycaprolactone (PCL) polymer as the matrix hasbeen used for the fabrication of PCL-HA-TiO2. Then, the mechanical test was conducted on the samplesand the extracted value of the experimental test was compared with the analytical model using moleculardynamics (MD) method. Finally, these properties were compared with the Dewey micromechanicstheory, and the error rate between the experimental method and the Dewey theory was reported. It wasfound that as the porosity percentage increased in the sample three-phase in composites, the model hasa higher error in this theory. Then, due to the importance of hydroxyapatite in the fabrication of bonescaffolds, the obtained results of mechanical properties (Elastic modulus and Poisson’s ratio) have beenanalyzed statistically. The application of these equations in the rapid prediction of Elastic Modulus andPoisson’s ratio of the synthetic bone scaffolds made of hydroxyapatite is highly recommended.