Holographic Studies of Wear in Implant Materials and Devices

Abstract

Wear is a very significant problem in the performance and design of total replacement prostheses. In recent years a great deal of interest has been shown by many workers in the measurement of wear in bioengineering materials and devices. Most of the experimental work has been done using the standard wear test devices such as pin on disc and reciprocating machines. The method of wear measurement in these experiments has nearly always been gravimetric. The major disadvantage in using these standard test methods is that the wear machines will not reproduce in vivo results since the test conditions are totally different. To overcome this difficulty joint simulators are being designed and built by various workers [1, 2]. For these simulators to yield useful findings new methods for measuring wear must be developed as the gravimetric methods in common use are no longer applicable since:

• (a) They are not sensitive enough.

• (b) They do not furnish the user with information about the location of the wear and this information is essential when comparing different designs of prostheses.