An elastic compound tube model for a single osteon.

A model is developed whereby the secondary osteon - the dominant microstruc¬tural com¬ponent of the cortical bone tissue - is consid¬ered as an n layered cylinder with internal stresses in linear isotropic elasticity. An exact solution is obtained for a loading condition represented by a tensile/compressive force. The length¬en¬ing, the side deforma¬tion, and the strain energy of the system are explicitly calculated. The behavior of the main elastic quan¬tities is illus¬trated by graphs. In particular, the impor¬tant role played by the parity of the number of lamellae is revealed.