Engineering and health experts at the University of Waterloo are collaborating on research that may lead to breakthroughs in preventing a serious, all-too-common injury — broken bones.
Their findings could prove especially important to elderly people typically more prone to falls and hip fractures. In fact, understanding the mechanics of how bones weaken over time could help serve the needs of the aging population in many parts of today’s developed world.
Dr. Thomas Willett is a professor of systems design engineering.
“We’re trying to put pieces of a puzzle together to understand the fundamental fracture mechanisms of bone and how these mechanisms degrade in aging and disease,” explained Dr. Thomas Willett, who applies engineering principles to the human body. “How does bone fracture? How does it resist fracture? How does this change with aging and disease?”
As one piece of a complex picture, Willett and other members of the research team, including PhD students Daniel Dapaah of engineering and Daniel Martel of kinesiology, and collaborator Dr. Andrew Laing, a kinesiology professor, recently developed an innovative testing method to simulate the impact a real fall would have on the fracture behaviour of human bone tissue.
Go to Putting pieces of a puzzle together for the full story.