Simulation of wear in a spherical joint with a polymeric component of the total hip replacement considering activities of daily living

Abstract

The present study assesses the impact of the main typical activities of patients' daily living (ADL) after total hip arthroplasty (THA) on the wear parameters of sliding couple's materials by simulating linear and volumetric wear according to the Archard's law in a spherical joint with a polymeric element of the total hip replacement (THR). The mathematical wear model, built on the basis of algorithms and custom codes of the finite element analysis in ANSYS and MATLAB software systems, has been studied numerically. The activities used in the model are: level walking, stair ascending-stair descending, chair sitting-chair rising, and deep squatting. They were described by typical waveforms of the angular displacements of the THR's femoral component and the waveforms of the applied force. The results of the simulation show that for the same duration the overall wear value with ADL is significantly higher than in the case of level walking according to the requirements of ISO 14242-1. Therefore, the evaluation of the wear value for ADL is more informative for predicting the functional life time of the THR. Analysis of the simulation results shows that the amount of wear calculated for all activities separately is practically the same as the overall wear value obtained at summary action of ADL. This effect of the independence of contributions to the total amount of wear of each activity makes it possible to significantly simplify the solution of the problem of wear estimation for typical activities, including stochastic ones.