3D model Experimental Setup

Rim cracking of polyethylene acetabular liners and squeaking in ceramic components are two important potential failure modes of hip implants, but the loads and stresses that cause such failures are not well understood. Contact stresses in hip implants are analyzed under worst case load conditions to develop new wear testing methods to improve the pre-clinical evaluation of next-generation hip implants and their materials. Complicated full-scale hip implant simulator tests are expensive and take months to complete. A primary goal of this work is to find inexpensive surrogate specimen shapes and loading modes that can, in inexpensive lab tests taking only a few hours, produce the same wear patterns as seen in full-scale prototype testing.

UofU Contributors/collaborators:
Tony Sanders (PhD student, Mechanical Engineering, UofU)
Ira Tibbets  (MS student, Mechanical Engineering, UofU)
Deepika Kakarla (MS student, Mechanical Engineering, UofU)
Parth Dudhiya  (MS student, Mechanical Engineering, UofU)

UofU Mentors:
Ken Monson (Asst. Prof., Mech. Engr, UofU)