Molecular mechanics of mineralized collagen fibrils in bone
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Nair_2013-Molecular mechanics of.pdf
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Author(s)
Nair, Arun K.
Gautieri, Alfonso
Chang, Shu-Wei
Buehler, Markus J
Date Issued
April 2013
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Nair, Arun K., Alfonso Gautieri, Shu-Wei Chang, and Markus J. Buehler. “Molecular mechanics of mineralized collagen fibrils in bone.” Nature Communications 4 (April 16, 2013): 1724. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Final published version
Abstract
Bone is a natural composite of collagen protein and the mineral hydroxyapatite. The structure of bone is known to be important to its load-bearing characteristics, but relatively little is known about this structure or the mechanism that govern deformation at the molecular scale. Here we perform full-atomistic calculations of the three-dimensional molecular structure of a mineralized collagen protein matrix to try to better understand its mechanical characteristics under tensile loading at various mineral densities. We find that as the mineral density increases, the tensile modulus of the network increases monotonically and well beyond that of pure collagen fibrils. Our results suggest that the mineral crystals within this network bears up to four times the stress of the collagen fibrils, whereas the collagen is predominantly responsible for the material’s deformation response. These findings reveal the mechanism by which bone is able to achieve superior energy dissipation and fracture resistance characteristics beyond its individual constituents.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Computational Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2720
