A Question About How Much Weight A Femur Can Support Before Breaking

[johnny rex]

Hi, I have several questions about femur strength especially human femur. How much weight a femur can support vertically before breaking?

Second question, anyone who have extensive understanding about osteology, biology, etc. What does this article talk about? What are the points of the authors? Do they try to find the strength of femur or what? According to the link, not sure what's the point because English isn't my native language. It is said 1500 mpa or something like that. This is the article https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley....2/ar.23796 Reply

[johnny rex]

@Shadow any idea? Reply

[Shadow]

(09-11-2019, 10:42 AM)johnny rex Wrote: @Shadow any idea?

I have never used time to search information about that. Approximately 30 times own body weight seems to be one hypothesis. This is something what @tigerluver might be able to answer. You could also send this question to some university etc. if no-one here is able to give a good answer. Reply

[tigerluver]

For question one, the goalpost can keep moving depending on the structure of the femur. In simple terms, you can keep widening the bone proportionately and then load more weight. A crude example, but compare the sauropod (Argentinasaurus) femur (top) to a mammoth femur (bottom):

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

I purposely chose an incomplete mammoth femur as the sauropod femur is incomplete but perhaps from the heaviest animal known to history. A mammoth femur is extremely thick, but the Argentinasaurus femur blows it out of water. There is no for certain answer as it seems organisms can keep pushing the limits. If we go from fossil record, that top femur was estimated to be from a 90 metric ton animal.

On the paper, it's almost but not quite a methods paper describing a the accuracy of a model/simulation. The ran simulations with different conditions to determine which model most accurately reflects reality. The conditions that produced the most accurate simulation were then recommended as the standard for future studies. Reply

[Shadow]

(09-12-2019, 02:59 AM)tigerluver Wrote: For question one, the goalpost can keep moving depending on the structure of the femur. In simple terms, you can keep widening the bone proportionately and then load more weight. A crude example, but compare the sauropod (Argentinasaurus) femur (top) to a mammoth femur (bottom):

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

I purposely chose an incomplete mammoth femur as the sauropod femur is incomplete but perhaps from the heaviest animal known to history. A mammoth femur is extremely thick, but the Argentinasaurus femur blows it out of water. There is no for certain answer as it seems organisms can keep pushing the limits. If we go from fossil record, that top femur was estimated to be from a 90 metric ton animal.

On the paper, it's almost but not quite a methods paper describing a the accuracy of a model/simulation. The ran simulations with different conditions to determine which model most accurately reflects reality. The conditions that produced the most accurate simulation were then recommended as the standard for future studies.

My reply was concerning only human femur, I noticed that I replied in a bit hurry earlier and it was unclear. But as said I haven´t used time to search information so nice that @tigerluver found time to give some answers. Reply