EVALUATING THE EFFECTS OF EXPERIMENTAL SETTINGS DURING ISO 7206-4 ENDURANCE AND PERFORMACE TESTS: A FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

Abstract

ISO 7206-4:2010 is used to determine the endurance properties and performance of stemmed femoral components of hip prosthesis. Experimental set-ups are allowed for tolerances with respect to the desired settings. The effects of the acceptable accuracies are not known nowadays. For this reason, this study aims at evaluating how and how much the precision of the experimental settings can affect the outputs under ISO 7206-4:2010 boundaries. Thus, a finite element model was first defined and verified against experimental test. Then, a sensitivity analysis involving accepted variations for potting level, angle in the frontal plane, angle in the lateral plane and material in use for the cement block, was performed. The results of sensitivity analysis show that both stress and deformation outputs were affected up to 100[Formula: see text]MPa and 0.5[Formula: see text]mm, respectively, for varus configurations. The material properties of the cement block had a main effect on the displacement of the head. The collected information through the performed sensitivity analysis on the verified model against experimental test has a double benefit. It supports the understanding of the potential effects during the experimental set-ups and it is also helpful in case of determining ranges for verification of developed numerical models.