MEASUREMENT OF THE THERMAL-CONDUCTIVITY OF CORTICAL BONE BY AN INVERSE TECHNIQUE

Experimental values for the thermal conductivity of cortical bone tiss ue vary widely in the literature. The possible sources for this variab ility are numerous and include differences in species, wet or dry cond itions, direction of heat flow, and experimental method and protocol. In addition, almost all of these studies use methods that were develop ed for testing high-conductivity materials. The purpose of the present work is to develop and demonstrate a measurement technique more suita ble to the relatively low thermal conductivities of cortical bone. A g uarded hot plate apparatus is employed, but the small specimen size re quires application of an inverse technique to extract thermal conducti vity values. Composite test specimens consisting of a known reference material and bone are measured, and the resulting effective thermal co nductivity is compared to a numerical solution of the experimental pro blem. Results for equine cortical bone indicate values of the thermal conductivity of 0.80 W/(m K) for saturated specimens and 0.70 W/(m K) for dry test specimens.