This finite element model of bone fracture healing was based, as closely as possible, on that published by Wehner et al (Wehner T, Steiner M, Ignatius A, Claes L (2014) Prediction of the time course of callus stiffness as a function of mechanical parameters in experimental rat fracture healing studies--a numerical study. PLoS One 9:e115695 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0115695).

It comprises Abaqus input files (.inp) and FORTRAN code (.f), the latter being the user subroutines used to control changes in the model as the tissues heal.

This model comprises part of the basis for a paper comparing the predictions of an earlier computational model (Wilson CJ, Schütz MA, Epari DR (2017) Computational simulation of bone fracture healing under inverse dynamisation. Biomech Model Mechanobiol 16:5-14 doi:10.1007/s10237-016-0798-x) to the results of an experimental study (Bartnikowski N et al. (2017) Modulation of fixation stiffness from flexible to stiff in a rat model of bone healing. Acta Orthop 88:217-222 doi:10.1080/17453674.2016.1256940). The conditions applied correspond to the in vivo experiment.

Each input file corresponds to a test group - flexible fracture fixation, stiff fixation, and fixation modulated from flexible to stiff at certain time-points, according to the inverse dynamization hypothesis (Epari DR, Wehner T, Ignatius A, Schuetz MA, Claes LE (2013) A case for optimising fracture healing through inverse dynamization. Med Hypotheses 81:225-227 doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2013.04.044)

This version of the collection contains additional code to derive morphometric characterisations and measurements of flexural rigidity (bending stiffness), to allow direct comparison to the experimental study. This includes a Python script to export the required results from the Abaqus output database, and Matlab code to carry out analyses. For flexural rigidity, Abaqus input files and Fortran code are included, which derive their geometry and material properties from the end-states of the iterative models, and are subjected to 4-point bending tests.