Analysis of Lattice-Based Cranial Implant

Abstract

A cranial implant plays a vital role in the restoration of skull defects, provides protection to the brain and helps in easy and fast recovery of the patient. There are several materials used for cranial implants which are biological and synthetic in nature. In recent years, bio-inspired lattice structures are being used to improve the performance of structures. Bio-inspired lattice structures are also the source of improving the design of bio-medical implants very close to the natural needs. For this research paper, an attempt has been made to design the cranial implant based on diamond, truncated cube and truncated octahedron lattice structures. For designing, SolidWorks and nTopology software were utilized. The effect of external impact force was considered for performance analysis of implant. Three popular bio-compatible materials such as titanium alloy (Ti6Al4v), polyetherketone (PEEK) and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) were considered for analyzing the role of metallic as well as polymeric materials-based cranial implants. It was observed that truncated octahedron lattice structure was best among three structures used in this study. Beam thickness parameter played a crucial role for the design of cranial implants using specific material.