28 THE ANNALS OF UNIVERSITY “DUNĂREA DE JOS “ OF GALAŢI

FASCICLE VIII, 2006 (XII), ISSN 1221-4590

TRIBOLOGY

PREDICTION OF WEAR OF ACETABULUM INSERTS DUE TO

MULTIPLE HUMAN ROUTINE ACTIVITIES
Justin ONIŞORU, Lucian CAPITANU, Aron IAROVICI
Institute of Solid Mechanics, Bucharest, Romanian Academy, Romania
j_onisoru@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT
It is difficult to predict the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the wear of the
components that allow relative motion due to several factors. First, the prosthetic
parts in contact experience a wide spectrum of loadings induced by the large domain
of common activities. Secondary, the contact conditions evolve due to wearing, a
long-time prediction implying a high level of nonlinearity.
The authors tried to overcome all these difficulties using a complex predictive
model that combines statistical evaluation, nonlinear mechanical analyses of load
transfer by the contact interface and tribological estimations of the wear
characteristics. After a theoretical description of the predictive model, one could
notice an application for an artificial hip joint – a frictional titanium alloy on
UHMWPE couple. Several loading regimes are considered as characterised in [1].
For every regime a dynamic Finite Element simulation of the dry-friction contact was
performed establishing the contact traces and the contact pressure distribution.
Those characteristics combined with the frequencies of the activities considered (as
determined in [2]) are input data for a statistical evaluation of the joint loading
during some period. Developing an original method the authors could evaluate the
volume of wear debris across different activities based on the joint load transfer
characteristics specific to each activity.

KEYWORDS: Total hip prosthesis, wear, finite element method.

1. INTRODUCTION a prosthesis was strongly influenced by the demand

The human locomotion is a natural process
based, from a mechanical point of view, on the
relative movement between some rigid levers – the
skeletal bones – acted by some passive and active
effectors – the muscles.
The relative motion is allowed by the joints
which also play an important role in transferring the
loads from one bone segment to another. The
mechanism of transferring the loads is a contact-based
one with all features involved by that (friction,
wearing etc.).
Replacement of a natural joint with an artificial
one will subsequently affect the load transfer
mechanism and will be generally conditioned by it,
due to the fact that the components of the prosthesis
will need to allow the relative movements specific for
the entire area of human activities for a long period. If
some activities will be forbidden or highly limited, the
level of the patient satisfaction will be low.
Looking back, from the beginning of
arthroplasty until today, we will see that the design of
enunciated below. And when, after rehab activities,
the patient had no complaints about the functionality
of the prosthesis, the attention of the specialists was
moved forward to the problematic induced by slow
phenomena as wearing, that are found to limit the
durability of a prosthesis, and subsequently the
lifetime of it. The researchers were focusing on two
directions – estimation of the load transfer mecha-
nism by explaining the frictional contact parameters,
and prediction of the wear based on the influence of
those parameters on the phenomenon itself.
Previous tribological studies showed a strong
correlation between the contact pressure and the wear
rate [3, 4]. It means that different activities will
conduct to different level of wearing. More than that,
for the same activity, the contact pressure will vary
during different stances of the activity [5]. So, the
wearing phenomena will not be at constant rate
phenomena, neither for the same activity nor across
activities. The issue is even more difficult considering
that different activities have different frequencies.
 THE ANNALS OF UNIVERSITY “DUNĂREA DE JOS “ OF GALAŢI
FASCICLE VIII, 2006 (XII), ISSN 1221-4590
TRIBOLOGY
Fig. 1. Previous studies on the hip joint contact mechanism
(left – Davy et al., 1988 [7]; right – Miyanaga et al, 1984 [6]).
The problem is how to quantify a priori across
activities the characteristics measuring the wearing
phenomena. In this study the authors tried to offer a
reliable method developed to predict the volumetric
wear rate in Total Hip Prostheses. This method
involve FE analyses of the contact mechanism (in
order to estimate the contact pressure variation during
activity), evaluation of specific quantities especially
introduced to allow comparison among stances inside
an activity and between different activities, and a
special summation technique that accounts for the
frequency and load magnitude of every activity.
2. METHODOLOGY
Clinical experience showed that for the revision
replacement of the cup due to wearing, the contact
surface was no longer spherical, some areas being
more damaged than others. It was obvious that,
basically, this phenomenon is caused by the unequal
distribution of load over the contact surface.
Previous studies [6, 7] established already the
location of the maximal pressure point on the
acetabulum, revealing the dependence of the contact
characteristics to the magnitude of the contact force
(fig. 1 – right part). One could see on the left part of
the figure, the evolution (location, direction and
magnitude) of the contact force determined by
experimental methods on a prosthetic femoral head. A
good evaluation of the contact force is the first step in
evaluation of the mechanical behaviour of the contact
couple. Usually, this contact force resultant could be
evaluated by experiments, it means by conducting gait
analyses and recovering the joint force either directly
– using some experimental prosthesis [1] – or by
calculus, based on inverse dynamics.
Of course, what is of interest is the contact
pressure distribution, but this is very difficult to
evaluate experimentally.
29
Instead of that, transferring, by intermediate of
some numerical approach of the contact mechanism,
the contact force from the femoral head to the
acetabular cup, one could obtain a good estimation of
the distribution of the contact pressure, over the entire
interface. A good method to do that is to perform a
non-linear, dynamic FE analysis of the contact couple
behaviour under the loading produced by a specific
activity. We used in our study a FE model of a rigid-
to-flexible contact between a rigid sphere (that
simulates the femoral head of a total hip prosthesis)
and a flexible hemispherical cup – assuming elastic
behavior of the UHMWPE – having the same
geometry as a real one (see fig. 2). The mechanical
properties used in analyses are listed in table 1.
Coulombian friction is assumed with a value of 0.06
for the coefficient of friction.
To validate our assumption of a rigid-to-flexible
contact we estimate the contact stiffness of the two
continua that contact each other by the following
formula:
E
γ= (1)
(
4 ⋅ 1 −ν 2 )
Using formula (1) one could obtain that the ratio
of the stiffness of the two continua is
γ fem.head
≈ 200
γ UHMWPE
which is larger enough to support our assumption.
Performing the analysis we obtained the
dynamic distribution of pressure, it mans that we have
for every point on the surface and in every moment
the value of the contact pressure. If we denoted with
S the contact surface and with T the duration of the
active cycle of a specific activity we will have the
contact pressure, as a function of time and position:
p( t ,x );t ∈ [ 0,T ],x ∈ S
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FASCICLE VIII, 2006 (XII), ISSN 1221-4590
TRIBOLOGY

Fig. 2. Finite Element model for the artificial joint.

One could define the instantaneous maximum establishing also the values for the constant C and
pressure as: the exponent n :
pm ( t ) = max { p( t ,x ); x ∈ S } C = 7.99 ⋅ 10 −6 n = −0.653
and the maximum pressure as being Replacing (5), (6), and (7) in (4) one could obtain
pM = max { p( t,x ); x ∈ S ,t ∈ [ 0,T ]} the volume of material removed during a single
The two measures are specific for the level of loading activity:
in a specific moment of the activity or for the entire L n +1
V = nC pM ⋅
period. T
Based on the functions defined before we could T pm ( t ) 
n +1
 p ( x,t ) 
evaluate a relative measure of the proximity to the
maximum area of pressure named "instantaneous
⋅
0 ∫∫

S
pM 
   dAdt =
 pm ( t ) 
(8)

index of pressure": 1 T
∫ ∫ λ n +1 ⋅p ( t,x ) dtdA
n +1
p( t ,x ) = nCpM L
p ( t,x ) = (2) T 0
pm ( t ) S

For every moment of time we could determinate the For more than one activity we could perform an
level of loading by: algebraic summation resulting:
p (t )
λ (t ) = m (3)
Vtotal = Vi =∑ i
pM
 1 T 
The volume of material removed by wear is [9]:
T
= ∑ 
n +1
 ni CpM L
T ∫ ∫ λ n +1 ⋅p ( t ,x ) dtdA  = (9)

∫ k ( t )P( t )vdt
0
V = kPnL = (4) i  S 
0
 1 T n +1 
∫∑
where
∫
λ ⋅ p ( t ,x ) dt dA
n +1
=  ni CpM L⋅
L  T 0 
v = const. = (5) S i 
T
is the velocity of the relative movement of the One could see that the integrand
frictional couple (assumed constant here) and P ( t ) is 1 T
the contact resultant given by integrating the contact I= ∑ n Cp
i
i
n +1
M L⋅
T ∫0
λ n +1 ⋅ p ( t,x ) dt (10)
pressure all over the interface surface:
P (t ) = ∫ p ( t,x ) dA
S
(6) which is a function of position only, could be a good
measure of the tendency of some areas of the contact
As we stated before, experimental tests showed interface to be affected by wear. It means that a map
some correlation between the contact pressure and the of the distribution of values of this integrand could be
wear rate. Wang et al [4] found by testing a good predictor for the geometrical features of the
CoCr/UHMWPE hip prostheses in a hip joint wear of the joint surfaces. We have denoted this inte-
simulator that, the wear factor could be expressed as: grand (either summed over activities, or specific for
every activity) as being a wear geometrical descriptor.
k = C ⋅ σ 0n (7)
 THE ANNALS OF UNIVERSITY “DUNĂREA DE JOS “ OF GALAŢI 31
FASCICLE VIII, 2006 (XII), ISSN 1221-4590
TRIBOLOGY

3. RESULTS pressure is achieved, and on the right the maps of the

wear geometrical descriptor for all activities.
As a measure of applicability of the method pre- One could see that even for all activities the
viously presented we have considered the problem of maximum is located in the superior part of the cup,
determination of the wear rate of the UHMWPE insert the maximum wear is likely to occur closer to the
belonging to a total hip prosthesis due to three routine median part of the cup.
activities: normal walking, stairs up and stairs down. Using the summation technique described in
The components of the contact resultant force in section 2, we obtained the distribution of the
the joint coordinate system (determined experimen- cumulative wear geometrical descriptor (see fig. 5a)
tally using an instrumented prosthesis [1]) are plotted for the activities considered. Due to the fact that one
in figure 3. One could see that all activities have activity (normal walking) has an increased frequency
almost the same level of maximum activity (with a (approx. 2,000,000 cycles/year versus 42,000
maximum for stairs up case). Also, we have noticed cycles/year for each of the others activities) the
that generally the vertical and saggital components are distribution of the cumulative wear geometrical
dominant, the lateral one being larger only for stairs descriptor is close to that for the mentioned activity.
down load case. In figure 5b, one could see the distribution of
In figure 4 one could see on the left side, the the cumulative wear geometrical descriptor, when
distributions of the contact pressure specific for every only the stairs up and stairs down cases are considered
activity at the instance of time when the maximum (at a frequency of 42,000 cycles/year each).

Table 1. The mechanical properties of materials used in FE analyses.

Material Young Modulus E [GPa] Poisson ratio ν Remarks
Co-Cr alloy 200 0.3 from ISO 5832-4
UHMWPE 1.06 0.36 from Lewis [8]

Contact resultant forces on acetabular cup Contact forces on acetabular cup - normal walking
300 150
Normal walking FX
Slow walking FY
Fast walking 100 FZ
250 Stairs up
Stairs down
Sitting down 50
Stand up
200
Standing
Knee bending
Force [%BW]
Force [%BW]

150
-50

100
-100

50
-150

0 -200
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
normalized time [--] normalized time [--]

Contact forces on acetabular cup - stairs up Contact forces on acetabular cup - stairs down
150 150
FX FX
FY FY
100 100 FZ
FZ

50 50

0 0
Force [%BW]
Force [%BW]

-50 -50

-100 -100

-150 -150

-200 -200

-250 -250
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
normalized time [--] normalized time [--]

Fig. 3. Loading conditions on the hip joint [1].

32 THE ANNALS OF UNIVERSITY “DUNĂREA DE JOS “ OF GALAŢI
FASCICLE VIII, 2006 (XII), ISSN 1221-4590
TRIBOLOGY

a)

b)

c)

Fig. 4. Contact pressure (left) and the wear geometrical descriptor (right) for three activities:
(a) normal walking; (b) stairs up; (c) stairs down.
 THE ANNALS OF UNIVERSITY “DUNĂREA DE JOS “ OF GALAŢI
FASCICLE VIII, 2006 (XII), ISSN 1221-4590
TRIBOLOGY
a)
Fig. 5. Cumulative wear geometrical parameter.
Length of wear Maximum contact
Activity
imprint [mm] pressure [N/mm2]
Normal
28.776 7.92
walking
Stairs up 33.095 8.66
Stairs down 33.381 8.40
The cumulative distribution of the wear geome-
trical descriptor is integrated over the entire contact
interface and the predicted volume of material remo-
ved from wear is resulting (see Table 2). One could
see that the predicted value, even a little bit larger, is
still in concordance with the data from literature.
4. CONCLUSIONS
Previous studies reveal that is a strong
correlation between the wearing rate and the contact
pressure. So, the wearing phenomena will be not a
constant rate phenomena, neither for the same activity
nor across activities.
The distribution of the contact pressure was dy-
namically evaluated by some non-linear FE analyses
that simulate the active cycle of the normal walking,
stairs up and stairs down activities. The maxima of
the contact pressure are plotted for every activity.
A summation technique was adopted in order to
evaluate the wear rate across activities. The adopted
method uses a new defined parameter, namely the
wear geometrical descriptor, which is a good
estimator of the distribution of worn areas across the
contact interface.
Integrating this descriptor over the entire joint
contact surface, the wear volumetric rate was
obtained. The resulted value (28.17 mm3/106 cycles)
is in concordance with the values resulted from
experimental tests performed on special hip joint
simulators [10-13].
33
b)
Table 2. The predicted wear rate.
Predicted wear rate Wear rates from
[mm3/106cycles] literature[mm3/106cycles]
17.5 (McKellop et al [10])
27.6 (McKellop et al [11])
28.17
28.0 (Hamilton et al [12])
23.3 (Shen et al [13])
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