Abstract
In biomechanics and orthopedics, finite element modelling allows simulating complex problems, and in the last few years, it has been widely used in many applications, also in the field of biomechanics and biotribology. As is known, one crucial point of FEM (finite element model) is the discretization of the physical domain, and this procedure is called meshing. A well-designed mesh is necessary in order to achieve accurate results with an acceptable computational effort. The aim of this work is to test a finite element model to simulate the dry frictionless contact conditions of a hip joint prosthesis (a femoral head against an acetabular cup) in a soft bearing configuration by comparing the performances of 12 common meshing strategies. In the simulations, total deformation of the internal surface of the cup, contact pressure, and the equivalent von Mises stress are evaluated by using loads and kinematic conditions during a typical gait, obtained from a previous work using a musculoskeletal multibody model. Moreover, accounting for appropriate mesh quality metrics, the results are discussed, underlining the best choice we identified after the large amount of numerical simulations performed.
Highlights
Finite element (FE) modelling as a research tool has been widely used in last few decades to study many different applications in the field of mechanics
The purpose of this study is to develop a dry frictionless contact FEM of a hip joint prosthesis with 12 common meshing strategies in order to compare the difference in terms of the calculated solution
The considered system was the hip joint system used for total hip replacement (Figure 1), focusing our attention on the stress-strain of the femoral head/acetabular cup system during the Materials 2019, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW
Summary
Finite element (FE) modelling as a research tool has been widely used in last few decades to study many different applications in the field of mechanics. Brekelmans et al [3] in their study introduced a new method to analyze the mechanical behavior of skeletal parts by applying the new analysis to a simple 2D model of the human femur Their results demonstrated that finite element analysis is suitable for the study of complex human parts such as the femur. Developed an FEM simulation in order to obtain an efficient and accurate prediction model for the stability of percutaneous fixation of acetabular fractures. Their FE model showed that this tool is of fundamental importance for the analysis of different fracture fixation techniques. From a tribological point of view, considering the interaction between the femoral head and the acetabular cup in a Total
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