THE EFFECTS OF DRYING AND RE-WETTING ON SOME MECHANICAL-PROPERTIES OF CORTICAL BONE

The purpose of the work described in this note was to determine whether drying bone, and then re-wetting it, had any important effect on its mechanical properties. Bending tests were performed on cow's bone. The effect on Young's modulus was extremely small, and insignificant in these experiments. Drying and re-wetting produced a statistically significant 5 percent reduction in bending strength. The work under the load deformation curve was not apparently altered by the treatment, but this value had a large variance, and the effect of drying would have to be very marked to be observable. The effect of drying and re-wetting on the mechanical properties of bone tested here can probably be ignored.