Inner porous regions play a critical role in the load bearing capability of large bones.We show that an extension of disordered elastic networks [Chung et. al., Phys. Rev. B, {\bf 54}, 15094 (1996)] exhibits analogs of several known mechanical features of bone. The "stress-backbones" and histograms of stress distributions for healthy and weak networks are shown to be qualitatively different. A hereto untested relationship between bone density and bone strength is presented.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0009221,
title = {A Model for Bone Strength and Osteoporotic Fractures},
author = {Gemunu H. Gunaratne and Chamith S. Rajapaksa and Kevin E. Bassler and Kishore K. Mohanty and Sunil J. Wimalawansa},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0009221},
year = {2007}
}