Potential Application of Entangled Porous Titanium Alloy Metal Rubber in Artificial Lumbar Disc Prostheses

Entangled Porous Titanium Alloy Metal Rubber (EPTA-MR) was used as a nucleus pulposus material in the design of non-fusion intervertebral disc prosthesis for the first time. A novel artificial lumbar intervertebral disc prosthesis was designed by reconstructing the lumbar model with reverse engineering technology, and the biomechanical behavior of the prosthesis was simulated under varied working conditions. The nucleus pulposus size was determined by the actual size of human prosthesis. EPTA-MR samples with different densities were prepared by medical titanium alloy wire experimental studies were conducted on static stiffness, damping energy consumption, and fatigue life. The results indicated that the static stiffness of EPTA-MR could reach approximately 1500 N·mm −1 , and its loss factor remained higher than 0.2, and the variation range was relatively small, with excellent vibration damping capacity and bearing capacity. Among them, the overall performance of EPTA-MR with a density of 2.5 g·cm −3 was closer to that of the physiologic intervertebral disc. A macro experiment of five million fatigue vibration tests combined with microstructure observation exhibited a wear rate of only 0.9396 g·MC −1 , with no noticeable change in the internal micro-morphology. Therefore, the EPTA-MR has a broad application prospect as the nucleus pulposus material of artificial intervertebral disc prosthesis.