THE ANNALS OF UNIVERSITY “DUNĂREA DE JOS “ OF GALAŢI 35

FASCICLE VIII, 2007 (XIII), ISSN 1221-4590

TRIBOLOGY

Paper present at

International Conference on
Diagnosis and Prediction in Mechanical
Engineering Systems (DIPRE’07)
26 - 27 October 2007, Galati, Romania

WEAR PREDICTION OF HIP ENDOPROSTHESES

Lucian CĂPITANU,Justin ONIŞORU, Aron IAROVICI

Institute of Solid Mechanics, Bucharest, Romanian Academy,

luciancapitanu@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT
The total hip prostheses can be considered as medical-mechanical devices with
established failure. The large domain of common activities induce a wide spectrum of
loadings in contact prosthetic parts. The contact conditions evolves due to wearing
and a long-time prediction imply a high level of nonlinearity. The authors tried to
overcome all these difficulties by using a complex predictive model that combines
statistical evaluation, nonlinear mechanical analyses of load transfer by the contact
interface and tribological estimations of the wear characteristics. For every regime,
a dynamic Finite Element simulation of the dry-friction contact was performed,
establishing the contact traces and the contact pressure distribution. In this way,
based on the joint load transfer characteristics specific to each activity, one coulds
evaluate the volume of wear debris.

KEYWORDS: Biotribology, Total hip prosthesis, wear, finite element method.

1. INTRODUCTION contact parameters, and prediction of the wear based

The relative motion between the skeletal bones
is allowed by joints which also play an important role
in transferring the loads from one bone segment to
another. The mechanism of transferring the loads is a
contact-based one with all features involved by that
(friction, wearing etc.).
Replacement of a natural joint with an artificial
one will affect the load transfer mechanism and will
be generally conditioned by it, due to the fact that the
components of the prosthesis will need to allow the
relative movements specific for the entire area of
human activities for a long period.
The design of a prosthesis was strongly influen-
ced by the demand enunciated below. The attention of
the specialists was moved forward to the problematic
induced by slow phenomena as wearing, that are
found to limit the durability of a prosthesis, and
subsequently the lifetime of it. The researchers were
focusing on two directions – estimation of the load
transfer mechanism by explicating the frictional
on the influence of those parameters on the
phenomenon itself. Tribological studies showed a
strong correlations between the contact pressure and
the wear rate [3, 4]. It means that different activities
will conduct to different level of wearing.
More than that, for the same activity, the contact
pressure will vary during different stances of the
activity [5]. So, the wearing phenomena will be not a
constant rate phenomena, neither for the same activity
nor across activities. The problem is how to quantify a
priori across activities the characteristics measures of
the wearing phenomena.
In this study a reliable method is developed in
order to predict the volumetric wear rate in Total Hip
Prostheses. This method involve:
a) FE analyses of the contact mechanism (in order
to estimate the contact pressure variation during
activity),
b) evaluation of specific quantities especially
introduced to allow comparison between stances
inside an activity and between different activities,
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TRIBOLOGY

c) a special summation technique that accounts for
the frequency and load magnitude of every
activity.
2. THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
During the revision replacement of the cup due
to wearing, clinical experience showed that the
contact surface was no longer spherical. Basically,
this phenomenon is caused by the unequal distribution
of the load over the contact surface.
Previous studies [6, 7] established already the
location of the maximal pressure point on the
acetabulum, revealing the dependence of the contact
characteristics to the magnitude of the contact force.
One could see on the figure 2, the evolution
(location, direction and magnitude) of the contact
force, determined by telemetric methods on a
prosthetic femoral head.
A good evaluation of the contact force is the
first step in evaluation of the mechanical behavior of
the contact couple. Usually, this resultant contact
force could be evaluated by experiments, it means by
conducting gait analyses and recovering the joint
force either directly, using some experimental pro-
sthesis [1], or by calculus, based on inverse dynamics.
Of course, what is of interest is the contact
pressure distribution, but this is very difficult to
evaluate experimentally.

Fig. 2a. Telemetric force measurements (Davy et al. [7]).

Fig. 1. Location of the maximal pressure point
(Myianaga et al. [6]).

Fig. 2b. Finite Element model for the artificial joint.

Table 1. The mechanical properties of materials used in FE analyses.

Material Young Modulus E [GPa] Poisson ratio  Remarks
Co-Cr alloy 200 0.3 from ISO 5832-4
UHMWPE 1.06 0.36 from Lewis [8]
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Instead of that, by intermediate of some nume- a point to be damaged by wear:

rical approach of the contact mechanism, the contact
p  t,x 
T

 pm  t  dt
1
force from the femoral head is transferred to the   x 
acetabular cup, In this way, one could obtain a good T
0
estimation of the distribution of the contact pressure, Practically, this proximity index show how much
over the entire interface. A good method to do that is time from the loading period, the point related with
performing a non-linear, dynamic FE analysis of the the x position will follow the trajectory of the contact
contact couple behavior under the loading produced
spot and being susceptible in the damaged area.This
by a specific activity. We used in our study a FE
entity is most a geometrical one, not related with the
model of a rigid-to-flexible contact between a rigid
loading level. For such a situation one defines a
sphere (that simulates the femoral head of a total hip
pressure index:
prosthesis) and a flexible hemispherical cup – T
assuming elastic behavior of the UHMWPE – having

1
the same geometry as a real one (see fig. 2a and b).   x  p  t,x     t  dt
T
The mechanical properties used in analyses are 0
listed in table 1. Coulombian friction is assumed, with For a combination of N activities it is suficient to
a value of 0.06 for the coefficient of friction. make a ponderate summation of the correspondent
To validate our assumption of a rigid-to-flexible indexes
contact we estimate the contact stiffness of the two
 i  fi , pMi   i  x 
N
continua by the following formula:   x 
E i 1
 (1)

4  1  2  The volume of material removed by wear is [9]:
T
Using formula (1) one could obtain that the ratio
of the stiffness of the two continua is:
V  kPnL  0 k  t P( t )vdt (4)
where
 fem.head
 200 L
v  const. (5)
UHMWPE T
Performing the analysis we obtained the is the velocity of the relative movement of the
dynamic distribution of pressure, it mans that we have frictional couple (assumed constant here) and P  t 
for every point on the surface and in every moment
the value of the contact pressure. If we denoted with is the contact resultant given by integrating the
S the contact surface and with T the duration of the contact pressure all over the interface surface:
active cycle of a specific activity we will have the
contact pressure, as a function of time and position:
P t    p t,x  dA (6)
S
p( t,x );t  [ 0,T ],x  S As we stated before, experimental tests showed
One could define the instantaneous maximum some correlation between the contact pressure and the
pressure as: wear rate. Wang et al [4] found by testing
pm ( t )  max  p( t ,x ); x  S  CoCr/UHMWPE hip prostheses in a hip joint
and the maximum pressure as being simulator that the wear factor could be expressed as:
pM  max  p( t ,x ); x  S ,t  [ 0,T ] k  C 0n (7)
The two measure are specific for the level of establishing also the values for the constant C and
loading in a specific moment of the activity or for the the exponent n :
entire period. C  7.99  10 6 n  0.653
Based on the functions defined before we could Replacing (5), (6), and (7) in (4) one could
evaluate a relative measure of the proximity to the obtain the volume of material removed during a single
maximum area of pressure named "instantaneous activity:
index of pressure": L n 1
p( t,x ) V  nC pM 
p  t,x   (2) T
pm ( t ) n 1
T  pm  t    p  x,t  
For every moment of time we could
determinate the level of loading by:
  
0  pM 
   dAdt 
 pm  t  
S
p (t )
 t   m (3) 1 T n 1
 T 0 
n 1
pM  nCpM L p  t,x  dtdA
By time mediating one could obtains some S
quantities related to geometrical characteristics of For more than one activity we could perform an
contact surface and the loading cycle parameters. For algebraic summation resulting:
instance we define a proximity index as a measure of
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Vtotal  Vi  300

Contact resultant forces on acetabular cup
Normal walking
i Slow walking
Fast walking
  250 Stairs up


T
 0
n 1 1
  ni CpM L  n 1 p  t,x  dtdA   (9) Stairs down
Sitting down
 T  Stand up
i  S  200
Standing
Knee bending

Force [%BW]
 

T

n 1 1
  ni CpM L  n 1  p  t,x  dt dA 150
 T 0 
S i 
100
One could see that the integrand


1 T n 1

n 1
I ni CpM L   p  t,x  dt (10) 50
T 0
i
which is a function of position only could be a good 0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
measure of the tendency of some areas of the contact normalized time [--]

interface to be affected by wear. It means that a map Fig 3b.

of the distribution of values of this integrand could be
a good predictor for the geometrical features of the
wear of the joint surfaces. We have denoted this inte- Contact forces on acetabular cup - stairs up
grand (either summed over activities, or specific for 150
FX
every activity) as being a wear geometrical descriptor. 100
FY
FZ

3. RESULTS 50

0
As a measure of applicability of the method
Force [%BW]

previously presented we have considered the problem -50

of determination of the wear rate of the UHMWPE
-100
insert belonging to a total hip prosthesis due to three
routine activities: normal walking, stairs up and stairs -150
down. The components of the contact resultant force
in the joint coordinate system (determined experime- -200

tally using an instrumented prosthesis [1]) are plotted

-250
in figure 3. One could see that all activities have 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
normalized time [--]
almost the same level of maximum activity (with a
maximum for stairs up case). Also, we have noticed Fig. 3c.
that generally the vertical and saggital components are
dominant, the lateral one being larger only for stairs
down load stairs. Contact forces on acetabular cup - stairs down
In Figure 4, one could see, the distributions of 150
FX
the contact pressure specific for every activity at the 100
FY
FZ
instance of time when the maximum pressure is
achieved. 50

0
Contact resultant forces on acetabular cup
Force [%BW]

300
Normal walking -50
Slow walking
Fast walking
250 Stairs up -100
Stairs down
Sitting down
Stand up -150
200
Standing
Knee bending
Force [%BW]

-200

150
-250
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
normalized time [--]
100

Fig 3d.
50

0
One could see that even for all activities the
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
normalized time [--]
0.7 0.8 0.9 1 maximum is located in the superior part of the cup,
the maximum wear is likely to occur closer to the
Fig. 3a. median part of the cup.
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Using the summation technique described in
section 2, we obtained the distribution of the
cumulative wear geometrical descriptor (see Fig. 5a)
for the activities considered.
Due to the fact that one activity (normal
walking) has an increased frequency (approx.
2,000,000 cycles/year versus 42,000 cycles/year for
each of the others activities) the distribution of the
cumulative wear geometrical descriptor is close to
that for the mentioned activity.
In figure 5b, one could see the distribution of the
cumulative wear geometrical descriptor, when only
the stairs up and stairs down cases are considered (at a
frequency of 42,000 cycles/year each).

Fig. 4a. Contact pressure for normal walking Fig 4b. Contact pressure for stairs-up.

Fig 4c. Contact pressure for stairs-down Fig.4d. The wear geometrical descriptor for normal
walking.

Fig. 4e. The wear geometrical descriptor for stairs-up Fig.4f. The wear geometrical descriptor for stairs-down.
40 THE ANNALS OF UNIVERSITY “DUNĂREA DE JOS “ OF GALAŢI
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TRIBOLOGY
Fig.5a. Cumulative geometrical descriptor for three
activities
Length of wear Maximum contact
Activity
imprint [mm] pressure [N/mm2]
Normal
28.776 7.92
walking
Stairs up 33.095 8.66
Stairs down 33.381 8.40
The cumulative distribution of the wear geo-
metrical descriptor is integrated over the entire con-
tact interface and the predicted volume of material
removed from wear is resulting (see Table 2).
One could see that the predicted value, even a
little bit larger, is still in concordance with the data
from literature.
4. CONCLUSIONS
Previous studies reveal that is a strong
correlation between the wearing rate and the contact
pressure. So, the wearing phenomena will be not a
constant rate phenomena, neither for the same activity
nor across activities.
The distribution of the contact pressure was dy-
namically evaluated by some non-linear FE analyses
that simulate the active cycle of the normal walking,
stairs up and stairs down activities. The maxima of
the contact pressure are plotted for every activity.
A summation technique was adopted in order to
evaluate the wear rate across activities. The adopted
method uses a new defined parameter, namely the
wear geometrical descriptor, which is a good
estimator of the distribution of worn areas across the
contact interface.
Integrating this descriptor over the entire joint
contact surface, the wear volumetric rate was
obtained. The resulted value (28.17 mm3/106 cycles)
is in concordance with the values resulted from
experimental tests performed on special hip joint
simulators [10-13].
Fig. 5b. Cumulative geometrical descriptor for stairs-
up and down.
.
Table 2. The predicted wear rate.
Predicted wear rate Wear rates from
[mm3/106cycles] literature[mm3/106cycles]
17.5 (McKellop et al [10])
27.6 (McKellop et al [11])
28.17
28.0 (Hamilton et al [12])
23.3 (Shen et al [13])
REFERENCES
1. Bergmann, G., Deuretzbacher, G., et al., Hip contact forces
and gait patterns fro routine activities, J. Biomech., 34, 2001, pp.
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activities in total hip patients, J. Biomech., 34, 2001, pp. 873-881.
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FASCICLE VIII, 2007 (XIII), ISSN 1221-4590
TRIBOLOGY