Stiffness and strength of fracture callus. Relative rates of mechanical maturation as evaluated by a uniaxial tensile test.

Mechanical evaluation of healing fractures in rabbits suggests that tensile testing both minimizes artifacts and permits direct intrinsic determinations of tissue quality. In healing osteotomies in the rabbit fibula, there is a rapid return of stiffness at 16 days, correlating with callus maturation. The failure mode proved to be a "delamination" fracture. Values for the strength of bone (3.3 N/m2) and fibrocartilage (0.2 N/m2) correlate well with the results of other studies but are probably values of maximum tissue adhesion strength.