Design and analysis of porous functionally graded femoral prostheses with improved stress shielding

Abstract

One of the most important problems of total hip replacement is aseptic loosening of the femoral component, which is related to the changes of the stress distribution pattern after implantation of the prosthesis. Stress shielding of the femur is recognized as a primary factor in aseptic loosening of hip replacements. Utilizing different materials is one of the ordinary solutions for that problem, but using functionally graded materials (FGMs) could be better than the conventional solutions. This research work aims at investigating different porous FGM implants and a real femoral bone by a 3D finite element method. The results show that a neutral functionally graded prosthesis cannot extraordinarily make changes in the stress pattern of bone and prosthesis, but an increasing functionally graded prosthesis leads a lower level of stress in the prosthesis, and a decreasing functionally graded prosthesis can properly reduce the stress shielding among these three architectures. Due to the absence of similar results in the specialized literature, this paper is likely to fill a gap in the state-of-the-art bio-implants, and provide pertinent results that are instrumental in the design of porous femoral prostheses under normal walking loading conditions.