Influence of lubrication performance on wear factor in metal-on-metal hip joint replacement using numerical analysis

The common problem of artificial hip joint replacement is the excessive generation of wear due to contacted bearing coupled. Computational simulation is becoming popular to predict wear generation. However, wear factor computed from experimental data was found to be varied due to the improvement of conformity leading to increase of lubrication performance especially for metal-on-metal hip joint replacement. The objective of this study was to develop the predicted wear factor based on the lubrication performance. The predicted linear wear taken from computational wear simulation was validated with theoretical wear model to predict the lubrication performance after 1 million cycles. Wear factors from experimental data were calculated and then plotted in the running-in and steady state. It shows that wear factor was a function of lambda ratio which was correlated with femoral head size and diametral clearance.