Frictional Heating in Hip Implants – A Review

Finite element analysis of polyethylene wear in total hip replacement: A literature review

Evaluation and prediction of wear play a key role in product design and material selection of total hip replacements, because wear debris is one of the main causes of loosening and failure. Multifactorial clinical or laboratory studies are high cost and require unfeasible timeframes for implant development. Simulation using finite element methods is an efficient and inexpensive alternative to predict wear and pre-screen various parameters. This article presents a comprehensive literature review of the state-of-the-art finite element modelling techniques that have been applied to evaluate wear in polyethylene hip replacement components. A number of knowledge gaps are identified including the need to develop appropriate wear coefficients and the analysis of daily living activities.

Heat Induction by Viscous Dissipation Subjected to Symmetric and Asymmetric Boundary Conditions on a Small Oscillating Flow in a Microchannel

The heat induced by viscous dissipation in a microchannel fluid, due to a small oscillating motion of the lower plate, is investigated for the first time. The methodology is by applying the momentum and energy equations and solving them for three cases of standard thermal boundary conditions. The first two cases involve symmetric boundary conditions of constant surface temperature on both plates and both plates insulated, respectively. The third case has the asymmetric conditions that the lower plate is insulated while the upper plate is maintained at constant temperature. Results reveal that, although the fluid velocity is only depending on the oscillation rate of the plate, the temperature field for all three cases show that the induced heating is dependent on the oscillation rate of the plate, but strongly dependent on the parameters Brinkman number and Prandtl number. All three cases prove that the increasing oscillation rate or Brinkman number and decreasing Prandtl number, when it is less than unity, will significantly increase the temperature field. The present model is applied to the synovial fluid motion in artificial hip implant and results in heat induced by viscous dissipation for the second case shows remarkably close agreement with the experimental literature.