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

Abstract

The application of porous bio-nanocomposites polymer has greatly increased in the treatment of bone<br />abnormalities and bone fracture. Therefore, predicting the mechanical properties of these bio-nanocomposites<br />are very important prior to their fabrication. Investigation of mechanical properties like (elastic<br />modulus and hardness) is very costly and time-consuming in experimental tests. Therefore, researchers<br />have focused on mathematical methods and new theories to predict the artificial synthetic bone for orthopedic<br />application. In this paper, porous bio-nanocomposites synthetic bone including nanocrystalline<br />Hydroxyapatite (HA) nanoparticles and Titanium oxide (TiO2) containing (0 wt%, 5 wt%, 10 wt%, and 15<br />wt% of TiO2) as reinforcements and the biocompatible polycaprolactone (PCL) polymer as the matrix has<br />been used for the fabrication of PCL-HA-TiO2. Then, the mechanical test was conducted on the samples<br />and the extracted value of the experimental test was compared with the analytical model using molecular<br />dynamics (MD) method. Finally, these properties were compared with the Dewey micromechanics<br />theory, and the error rate between the experimental method and the Dewey theory was reported. It was<br />found that as the porosity percentage increased in the sample three-phase in composites, the model has<br />a higher error in this theory. Then, due to the importance of hydroxyapatite in the fabrication of bone<br />scaffolds, the obtained results of mechanical properties (Elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio) have been<br />analyzed statistically. The application of these equations in the rapid prediction of Elastic Modulus and<br />Poisson's ratio of the synthetic bone scaffolds made of hydroxyapatite is highly recommended.