• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.72 no.2
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• pp.191-201
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• 2019

Finite element analysis is one of the most used tools for studying femoral neck fracture. Nerveless, consensus concerning either the choice of material characteristics, damage law and /or geometric models (linear on nonlinear) remains unreached. In this work, we propose a numerical quasi-brittle damage model to describe the behavior of the proximal femur associated with two methods to evaluate the Young modulus. Eight proximal femur finite elements models were constructed from CT scan data (4 donors: 3 women; 1 man). The numerical computations showed a good agreement between the numerical curves (load - displacement) and the experimental ones. A very encouraging result is obtained when a comparison is made between the computed fracture loads and the experimental ones ($R^2=0.825$, Relative error =6.49%). All specific numerical computation provided very fair qualitative matches with the fracture patterns for the sideway fall simulation. Finally, the comparative study based on 32 simulations adopting linear and nonlinear meshing led to the conclusion that the quantitatively results are improved when a nonlinear mesh is used.