Clinical wear depends on several factors such as implant specific factors (material, design, and sterilization), surgical factors/techniques, and patient-specific factors (weights and activities). The load magnitude for wear testing in the standard protocols (i.e., 2 kN as per ASTM F1714 or 3 kN as per ISO 14243-3) represent an average patient weight and does not address the other “what-if”’ scenarios (i.e., wear vs. patient weights, activities, duration, etc.,). The results from Wear factor was first evaluated using actual wear testing conducted on metal on cross-linked polyethylene bearings along with well-established Dowson's wall bridge equation. As per Dowson-Wallbridge, volumetric wear is V=2.376·KNWR+C or K=V/(2.376·NWR) where V is the volumetric wear in mm3, K is the wear factor in mm3/Nmm, N is the number of cycles, W is the load in Newtons, R is the bearing radius in mm, and C is the creep (assumed to be negligible, i.e., C=0 in this model. 28 mm simulator wear was first used to evaluate wear factor, but since simulator wear presented as a mass loss, these results were converted to volumetric wear using the equation
(m is the wear in mg and r is the density of XLPE in mg/mm3 (=0.923). The Dowson-Wallbridge equation was then validated for predictive accuracy against actual wear testing on the predecessor THR system. The wear factor thus obtained was used to compute the theoretical-wear for other sizes (i.e., 42 and 46 mm bearings). The theoretical-wear was then compared to simulator wear for predictive accuracy.Objective
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