A predictive framework of the tribological impact of physical activities on metal-on-plastic hip implants

Abstract

For hip implant designs made of polyethylene, the wear process for acetabular cups plays a crucial role in joint lifetime. Though much of the wear occurs in the mixed lubrication regime, which is characterized by both fluid dynamics and contact mechanics related behaviors, current wear modeling approaches often ignore the interplay of these dominant tribological modes. In this work, a reasonably high-fidelity mixed lubrication modeling framework that is able to scale to patient-relevant timescales has been constructed. The model is focused on quantifying wear for an artificial hip implant on a patient-specific basis. The results show that different daily activities can result in vastly different wear levels.