The analysis of the dimple arrangement of the artificial hip joint to the performance of lubrication

Abstract

Artificial hip joint surgery is one of the most successful methods used to restore the functioning of damaged hip bones. But there are obstacles to the use of artificial hip bone, which is the amount of friction occurring and wears. To overcome these obstacles, a surface of the artificial hip joint is modified by adding dimples in order to minimize the contact pressure of solid and to reduce friction and wear. The purpose of this study is to determine a better of lubrication performance with the variations of the dimple arrangements under the normal walking condition. Simulation results have already exited the point of convergence studies, and the obtained results are such as hydrodynamic pressure, contact pressure, and the film thickness of the lubricant with the variations of the number and pitch dimples. The results of the CSM method under dry condition, it shows that the addition of surface with dimples has a positive effect to reduce the contact pressure and indirectly reduce wear. The maximum surface contact pressure is 54.84 MPa with dimple and 94.22 MPa without a dimple. The results of the FSI method under lubrication condition, it was found that the variation of 7 dimples with a dimple pitch of 500 μm has the best lubrication performance. The hydrodynamic pressure is 0.73 Pa, the contact pressure is 0.42 Pa, and the film thickness of the lubricant is 29.59 μm. The increase of film thickness that occurs due to hydrodynamic pressure will cause the fluid lift force to withstand the loading of the solid structure.