Bending and fracture toughness of woven self-reinforced composite poly(methyl methacrylate)

Abstract

Loosening remains an impediment to the long-term success of total hip replacements despite numerous improvements in the materials used. In cemented prostheses, fatigue and fracture of bone cement have been implicated in the failure of these devices. A new material, self-reinforced composite poly(methyl methacrylate). (SRC-PMMA), has been developed. SRC-PMMA is formed by a novel processing method that will be described. The composite consists of high strength, highly oriented PMMA fibers embedded in a matrix of PMMA. Using a woven form of SRC-PMMA, an in vitro physical and mechanical evaluation was performed to assess the feasibility of its use in an orthopedic prosthesis. Three different weaves of SRC-PMMA were evaluated in bending and fracture toughness in air, after immersion for 30 days in 37 degrees C saline, and after gamma irradiation followed by immersion. Bending modulus and strength were decreased by gamma irradiation followed by saline immersion. The effect of saline immersion alone on bending strength and modulus was negligible. Saline immersion and gamma irradiation followed by saline immersion was shown to have little or no effect on the fracture toughness of woven SRC-PMMA. Differences in the fracture processes of the different weaves were found and can be related to the differing orientation of fibers to the fracture toughness pre-crack. Optimally incorporated SRC-PMMA absorbs the same amount of water as bone cement. Comparison to previous and current work with bone cement controls shows that SRC-PMMA is a material equal to or better than bone cement in all tests performed. It deserves further consideration as a candidate biomaterial.

Studies on single polymer composites of poly(methyl methacrylate) reinforced with electrospun nanofibers with a focus on their dynamic mechanical properties

“…The concept was first described by Capiati and Porter [2] decades ago for high density polyethylene. Following their pioneering work, single polymer composites have been successfully manufactured for a variety of different semi-crystalline and amorphous polymers, including polyethylene [3], polypropylene [4], poly(ethylene napthalate) [5], poly(lactic acid) [6], polyamide [7] and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) [8][9]. Several techniques have been reported for the production of these composites, such as film-stacking [10] which will be used in this study, hot compaction [11] and co-extrusion [12].…”

“…To overcome this problem, polymers with the same chemical composition but different chemical structure than the fiber were mostly used [14]. PMMA single polymer composites with improved mechanical properties [8][9] were produced by hot compaction utilising the melt spun micron-size fibers.…”

“…Unlike the single polymer composites involving semi-crystalline polymers, PMMA single polymer composites are unique in the sense that they were fabricated from amorphous PMMA with sufficient amount of molecular orientation [8]. Our hypothesis is that the composite performance can further be improved by using PMMA nanofibers and these fibers can be produced by the electrospinning technique.…”

Development and characterization of insert injection moulded polypropylene single-polymer composites with sandwiched woven fabric

“…They not only offer the promise of superior mechanical properties and reduced weight, but also provide a real world solution for improving recyclability. Different thermoplastic polymers, including polyethylene (PE) [1,2], polypropylene (PP) [3,4], polyethylene terephthalate (PET) [5,6], polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) [7,8], polylactic acid (PLA) [9,10], polyamide (PA) [11,12], polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) [13] and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) [14], were exploited to manufacture SPCs. Another advantage of SPCs is the missing dispersion step in their production contrasting the common polymer nanocomposites, so the new members of SPC family, the micro-and nanofibrillar SPCs, were developed [15].…”

Direct Forming of All-Polypropylene Composites Products from Fabrics made of Co-Extruded Tapes

“…In recent years, "self-reinforced" polymer composites have been proposed as an alternative to traditionally reinforced composites for a wide range of applications. Although the focus of this paper is on polypropylene (PP)-based composites, a range of processing routes are presented in literature based on different polymers including polyethylene [2][3][4][5][6][7], polypropylene [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], polyethylene terephthalate [18][19][20], polyethylene naphthalate [21], poly(methyl methacrylate) [22][23][24][25], polyamide [26] and liquid crystal polymers [27,28]. The examples of forming routes described in this paper use polypropylene based composites, however the concepts presented here may also be readily adapted to many other polymers.…”