Organizer:
Dieter Kardas, Hannover

Optimizations in structures, materials, shapes, interactions of devices and processes are main interests in economical and ecological thinking. On this focus, researchers get more and more of their ideas from evolutionary mechanisms and structures. The human skeleton is one of these naturally optimized structures. At first glance one notices the extraordinary shapes of the skeleton and bones. At the macro level the benefit of those structures lies in satisfying the needs to maintain the shape of the body, to transmit acting forces and to protect the soft tissues of inner organs. A closer look into smaller length scales reveals a big range of complex structures and processes which are interacting in different ways.

Since Julius Wolff did the first steps in studying the mechanical behavior of the structure and the shape of bones at the end of the 19th century, bone mechanics has become a common and expanding research field. Multi-disciplinary approaches in computational mechanics are applied nowadays to get deeper understandings in this framework. Many open questions, such as how to make a permanent implant and what is the reliable indicator of the remodeling process, still remain to be solved. Many institutions including the Leibniz Universität Hannover are nowadays engaged to find answers to these questions. This symposium, organized by the Research Training Group 615 of the Leibniz Universität Hannover, serves as a platform for researchers from different institutions to present their results, current research progresses and future visions in bone mechanics.

The symposium on Computational Bone Mechanics will cover the following topics:

• Constitutive modeling of bone tissue including multiscale methods
• Bone remodeling and bone repair
• Environmental conditions (joint loads and muscle forces)
• Imaging and model reconstruction
• Models for bone cells and sensor networks
• Computer assisted surgery systems
• Quality and durability of bone implants