Abstract
Flaking-type wear, so-called delamination, is often observed in polyethylene joint components. It is thought that crack formation and propagation at grain boundaries were accelerated by gamma-irradiation and other factors such as material processing. We previously had reported that gamma-irradiation increased subsurface crack area of UHMWPE under multi-direction sliding fatigue testing and hardened grain boundaries of UHMWPE. And vitamin E addition into UHMWPE suppressed these effects of gamma-irradiation. In this study, unidirectional and multi-directional sliding fatigue testings were carried out for virgin, gamma-irradiated, vitamin E added and gamma-irradiated UHMWPE specimens. The produced cracks were observed by Scanning Acoustic Tomography, and surface roughness(Ra) of loaded area was measured. Rising of surface roughness were observed just before the delamination on gamma-irradiated UHMWPE. It is possible that the delamination destruction depend not only on subsurface crack formation and propagation, but also on crack formation at surface.
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