Background:​ The mechanical parameters of human bone tissue materials are not only the fundamental data for the stress calculation, fracture damage analysis and stress-related bone remodeling, but also one of the main indispensable factors for the further investigation of the characteristics of biomechanical behavior of human bone. However, no international standards for the bone mechanical property tests have been reported.

Objective:​ To summarize the research progress on the topics of specimen preparation, specimen constraints and fixation, test data processing and experiment error of tension-compression testing.

Methods:​ Under the environment of no specific standard for the tensile and compression testing of bone tissue to follow, the verified test methods and ways were introduced. The error and its decrease during the tension-compression testing were concluded and emphasized;​ the standardized bone tissue macro tension and compression test method was also introduced with the purpose of reducing the systematic errors.

Results and Conclusion:​ By performing the tension-compression testing, key parameters such as elastic modulus, Poisson’s ratio, tensile strength and compress strength of the bone tissue could be acquired. Important testing procedures involving designing and machining of standard specimen, specimen gripping, data processing and mechanical parameter calculation were tested. During each procedure, the systematic errors need to be reduced according to the latest researches.