Axial injury tolerance of the clavicle and the effect of age and gender

Although clavicle biomechanical response under axial loading was studied by a number of researchers, no injury criteria has been established. An injury criterion could help interpret the results from anthropometric test device and human clavicle finite element modeling. Therefore, the goal of this study is to construct a database of clavicle axial loading response, develop an injury criterion for clavicle under axial loading and study the effect of arameter s such as age, gender, loading rate, aspect(right vs left),boundary condition on clavicle injury risk. Four clavicles were loaded to failure under axial loading configurations at loading rate of 1m/s to further expand the current available clavicle failure data in literature. Then a database of 68 clavicle specimens under axial loading failure was compiled. A multivariate Weibull survival analysis was performed with this database to obtain the clavicle injury risk criterion under axial loading. It was found that the clavicle injury risk decreases as the age increase until 56 years old, and then the clavicle injury risk increases as age increases. It was also observed that female subject has a higher clavicle injury risk than male under the same loading condition. The boundary conditions could also change the clavicle injury risk significantly. However, loading rate and aspect (Left VS Right) do not have statistically significant effects on clavicle injury risk in this stud