Biotribological study of human artificial joint replacements

The wear and wear particles of hip joint replacements is a main problem causing the failure. Wear particles are generated from the artificial materials during motion, and they have adverse biological reactions with the surrounding tissue and bone. However, wear cannot be completely avoided in artificial hip bearings as long as they are moving under loads. Although most of studies are towards how to minimise wear, this PhD project will develop a new strategy on how to control the wear. Control of wear particles is exactly what engineers have designed in industrial lubrication systems such as aircraft and automotive, which work under more severe conditions but resulting in almost zero wear.
This project aims to develop hip joint prostheses with a new concept of a 'wear control system'. The objective is to control the wear particles within the hip implant to avoid direct contact to the periprosthetic tissue, so that unfavourite biological reactions and associated problems or the third body wear can be reduced. The target material combinations include metal (or ceramic) heads on polyethylene cups that associated with polyethylene wear particles. The project will include both numerical simulations and experimental test.
The numerical analysis will be based on previous thin-film lubrication model and will explore to the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models for particle immigration analysis. Numerical simulations will provide an optimisation on the design parameters of the control system, such as the location, shape and distribution. The experimental tests will include microfluidics flow test and joint wear simulator tests to evaluate the efficiency of the wear reduction.