Numeric Study of PMMA Flow on a Small Dimension Channel: A First Approach

Abstract

Polymethylmethacrylate has been used in orthopaedic surgery for the fixation of prosthetic implants for forty years. Cement characteristics, namely rheological and flow properties, greatly affect implant success. Moreover, knowing predictable and reproducible cement flow characteristics allows the surgeon to establish more rigorous handling conditions and prosthesis precise positioning. In contrast to the relatively large amount of work on mechanical properties of bone cements, few data have been published oh their rheological properties. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes using VOF (volume-of-fluid) method has proven to be a useful and robust tool method to simulate multi-material flows with immiscible interfaces. This work explores and describes the possibility of to use a commercial available CFD package (ANSYS CFX®) in the study of PMMA flow on a small dimension multy-channel system.