The use of bone cement as a fixation agent has ensured the long-term functionality of THA implants 1. However, some studies have shown the undesirable effect of wear of stem-cement interface, due to the release of metals and polymeric debris lead to implant failure 2,3. Debris is generated by the micromotion together with a severely corrosive medium present in the crevice of stem-cement interface 3,4. FEA studies showed that micromotion can affect osseointegration and fretting wear 5,6. The aim of this research is to investigate if the micromotions measures from The For the computational analysis, the same testing configurations were modeled on software ANSYS. The analysis was performed using linear isotropic elasticity for both stem (E=193GPa; ⱱ=0.27; σy=400MPa) and PMMA cement (E=2.7GPa; ⱱ=0.35; σu=76MPa)7,8. A second-order tetrahedral element was used to mesh all components with a size of 0.5 mm in the stem-cement contact area, increasing until 1.0 mm outside from them. A frictional contact (µ=0.25) with an augmented Lagrange formulation was used. The third cycle of loading was evaluated and a variation of sliding distance less than 10% was set as convergence criteria. The micromotion was measured as the sliding distance on the stem-cement interface.Introduction
Methods