Tribological properties of polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel reinforced with nanometer hydroxy apatite

Abstract

As a potential artificial cartilage material, the friction and wear properties of nano-hydroxy apatite (HA) particles filled poly (vinyl alcohol) hydrogel (PVA-H) composites sliding against stainless steel disk under water lubrication condition were studied by using a four ball tester. The worn surfaces were investigated by using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to determine the wear mechanisms. Experimental results show that filling HA to PVA-H will slightly increase the friction coefficient of composites with the increasing of HA content under water lubrication condition. Meanwhile, HA particles can greatly reduce the wear mass loss of the PVA-H composites and enhance the load carrying capacity, the wear loss of the 1 wt% HA reinforced PVA-H composites can be decreased by 30 percent under 2.0 MPa to 50 percent under 0.5 MPa contact pressure. We also found that 2 wt% HA content of composites increase the wear mass loss under the same condition. SEM examination shows that the worn surface of low HA containing (1 wt%) composites are much smoother than that of pure PVA-H or high HA containing (2 wt%) composites under 1.5 MPa contact pressure. It is also found that there are big hole and big reunited HA particles in the surface of 2 wt% HA containing composites, which leads to deterioration of the surface of samples under higher loads in water lubrication. These results may be useful in the tribological design of artificial articular cartilage material.