A Contact Model for Establishment of Hip Joint Implant Wear Metrics

Wear is an important issue in hip implants. Excessive wear can lead to toxicity and other implant associated medical issues such as patient discomfort and decreased mobility. Since implant wear is the result of contact between surfaces of femoral head and acetabulum implant, it is important to establish a model that can address implant surface roughness interaction. A statistical contact model is developed for the interaction of femoral head and acetabulum implant in which surface roughness effects are included. The model accounts for the elastic-plastic interaction of the implant surface roughness. For this purpose femoral head and acetabulum implants are considered as macroscopically spherical surfaces containing micron-scale roughness. Approximate equations are obtained that relate the contact force to the mean surface separation explicitly. Closed form equations are obtained for hysteretic energy loss in implant using the approximate equations.