A rolling-gliding wear simulator for the investigation of tribological material pairings for application in total knee arthroplasty

• Main Authors: Denkena Berend, Turger Anke, Ostermeier Sven, Richter Berna I, Hurschler Christof
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2010-06-01
• Series: BioMedical Engineering OnLine
• Online Access: http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/9/1/24

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Material wear testing is an important technique in the development and evaluation of materials for use in implant for total knee arthroplasty. Since a knee joint induces a complex rolling-gliding movement, standardised material wear testing devices such as Pin-on-Disc or Ring-on-Disc testers are suitable to only a limited extent because they generate pure gliding motion only.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A rolling-gliding wear simulator was thus designed, constructed and implemented, which simulates and reproduces the rolling-gliding movement and loading of the knee joint on specimens of simplified geometry. The technical concept was to run a base-plate, representing the tibia plateau, against a pivoted cylindrical counter-body, representing one femur condyle under an axial load. A rolling movement occurs as a result of the friction and pure gliding is induced by limiting the rotation of the cylindrical counter-body. The set up also enables simplified specimens handling and removal for gravimetrical wear measurements. Long-term wear tests and gravimetrical wear measurements were carried out on the well known material pairings: cobalt chrome-polyethylene, ceramic-polyethylene and ceramic-ceramic, over three million motion cycles to allow material comparisons to be made.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The observed differences in wear rates between cobalt-chrome on polyethylene and ceramic on polyethylene pairings were similar to the differences of published data for existing material-pairings. Test results on ceramic-ceramic pairings of different frontal-plane geometry and surface roughness displayed low wear rates and no fracture failures.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The presented set up is able to simulate the rolling-gliding movement of the knee joint, is easy to use, and requires a minimum of user intervention or monitoring. It is suitable for long-term testing, and therefore a useful tool for the investigation of new and promising materials which are of interest for application in knee joint replacement implants.</p>