Evaluation of static safety factor for hip implant stems coated with polymeric and composite materials

Abstract

This study focused on finite element analysis of fatigue safety factor evaluation of hip implant stems coated with Virgin-PEEK and CFR-PEEK coating materials corresponding to different human activities: standing up, normal walking and climbing stairs under dynamic loadings. The aim of this study is to find out which of all these models have a better performance in the prosthesis-bone systems by comparing the fatigue safety factor of coated and uncoated prosthesis.

The results showed that the fatigue safety factor of coated hip implants increased significantly (at least 71.6% in normal walking, 49.76% in climbing stairs and 141.15% in standing up) compared to uncoated implants. The maximum safety factor was obtained when using carbon fiber coated composites with first configuration of carbon fibers (°0/°45- /°45+ /°90), where the increase in safety factor was 62.56% at least.

It is recommended to use the composite materials reinforced by carbon fibers with the proposed configuration because of its role in increasing the values ​​of the static safety factor of hip implants, which means to prolong lifetime of the prosthesis-bone system.