An investigation has been made of the source and magnitude of anisotropic material properties of cancellous bone in the proximal epiphysis of the human tibia. Results are reported for stiffness measurements made in three orthogonal directions on 21 cubes of cancellous bone before testing to failure along one of the three principal axes. The structure is approximately transversely isotropic. Strength and stiffness are linear with area fraction for loading along the isotropic axis. Strength is proportional to stiffness for all directions. A finite element model is proposed, based on experimental observations, which enables one to predict the elastic constants of cylindrically structured cancellous bone in the tibia from morphological measurements in the transverse plane.

Pulse transmission ultrasound was used to determine the longitudinal wave speed along the direction of trabecular alignment in 32 water-saturated anisotropic tibial bovine cancellous bone samples and in one cortical bone sample also from the bovine tibia. These results are compared to published ultrasound wave-speed data obtained from bovine femoral specimens. Nonlinear regression was used to fit Biot’s theory to the data. The correlation coefficient for regression analysis between the experimental ultrasound velocities and the velocities predicted by Biot’s theory was r=0.78.