A general method for the determination of the local orthotropic directions of heterogeneous materials : application to bone structures using μCT images

To assess the degree (i.e., isotropy, transverse isotropy, or orthotropy) and the directions of anisotropy of a three-dimensional structure, information about its mesostructure is necessary. Usually, a topological analysis of computed tomography or microcomputed tomography images is performed and requires an interpretation of the constitutive elements of the three-dimensional structure, which may lead to a simplistic description of the geometry. In this paper we propose an alternative technique based on a geometric tensor and we use it to analyze 38 representative elementary volumes extracted from 24 specimens of cortical bone in a human femur whose geometries have been reconstructed via microcomputed tomography images.