Fig. (9) The lower face of the bottommost vertebra was fixed, and we subdivided the upper face of the uppermost vertebral body into four quadrants. In each of the first four load-states (denoted as load-states I-IV), precisely one of the quadrants I-IV, was subdued to downward stress. The fifth load-state is obtained by fixing the lower face of the bottommost vertebra, and applying an evenly distributed stress on the upper portion of the uppermost vertebral body, i.e. all four quadrants of Fig. (8) are stressed. The additional shear analysis was done by applying shear stress on circular lateral portions, counter-clockwise and clockwise respectively. The lower part of the image illustrates this for load-state V.