Analysis of tribological behavior of medical-grade UHMW polyethylene under dry and lubricated conditions with human body fluids using Taguchi and GRA techniques

Abstract

The present work focuses on evaluating the tribological behavior of ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) with 316L stainless steel and Ti6Al4V under dry and lubricated sliding conditions using human body fluids (synovial fluid and human serum). Eighteen trials of experiments were performed using a reciprocating sliding tribometer (pin-on-disc) at 37°C based on Taguchi’s L18 (21 × 32) array. The in-vitro experimental results revealed that UHMWPE offers better tribological performance under synovial fluid lubrication conditions irrespective of the counterface material. The optimization of the response variables (coefficient-of-friction (COF) and specific wear rate (WR)) was performed using optimization techniques (Taguchi and Grey relational analysis). It was revealed that Ti6Al4V counterface material under synovial fluid lubrication and normal load of 52 N exhibits the optimal tribological performance with UHWMPE. The contribution of process parameters on the COF and WR was evaluated using analysis of variance. It was established that load is the most significant parameter, affecting COF and WR.

Fabrication and tribological behavior of novel UHMWPE/vitamin-C/graphene nanoplatelets based hybrid composite for joint replacement

“…wear % of GNP and decreased by 99.3% on filling with 2 Wt.% GNP sliding under human serum environment as compared to that obtained for virgin UHMWPE as reported inHussain et al (2020b).…”

“…It is also observed that the addition of 2% of GNP filler resulted in a wear rate of 0.91 × 10 −7 mm 3 N/m under dry sliding and 0.76 × 10 −7 mm 3 N/m under lubricated sliding using the human serum. The wear rate of UHMWPE under dry sliding decreased by 99.17% with reinforcement of 2 Wt.% of GNP and decreased by 99.3% on filling with 2 Wt.% GNP sliding under human serum environment as compared to that obtained for virgin UHMWPE as reported in Hussain et al (2020b).…”

“…It can be observed from Figure 5(a) that the friction of the coefficient decreases with an increase in the weight percentage of the reinforcement of GNPs in the composite material. The friction coefficient of UHMWPE composite under dry sliding decreased by 28% with reinforcement of 2 Wt.% of GNP and is decreased by 31.57% on refilling with 2 Wt.% GNP sliding under human serum environment as compared to virgin UHMWPE (Hussain et al , 2020b).…”

Effect of different loads on wear mechanisms of polyether-ether-ketone in normal saline and debris-isolating method

“…This shortens the service life of prostheses. [10][11][12][13] It has been shown that these diseases are related to factors such as size, quantity, and morphology of wear particles. 14 Shanbhag et al 15 reported that particles with diameters less than 10 mm were easily ingested by phagocytes, and had strong biological activity.…”

“…The characterization of wear particles requires on an appropriate isolation protocol. 13 Much research focused on the isolation of artificial joint wear particles from the lubricating medium. Affatato et al 17 proposed a method to isolate ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) wear particles from the bovine calf serum in a low vacuum system.…”