Acoustic Emission Studies in Hip Arthroplasty – Peak Stress Impact In Vitro Cemented Prosthesis

What is it about?

Engineering has a very important role in the development of non-destructive monitoring of orthopaedical systems allowing the evaluation of its integrity. The placement of the metal implant in the channel open in the femoral bone without using cement or by mechanical attack, called a non cemented arthroplasty, came into use in an effort to solve the problem. AE monitoring better allows to understand the orthopaedic construction mechanisms and in focusing other mechanisms that were not detected by conventional ways. Signals of AE allows to study the fatigue behaviour of the cement that holds the implant to the bone in orthopaedic implants. With the fatigue test the mechanisms leading to the failure of an hip prosthesis are characterized. The second part of this work characterizes the Acoustic Emission phenomena, considering the origin and propagation, parameters and detection of AE signals as well as modelling studies. The third part, describes the methods of AE sources location, in particular the 3D methods which are needed to study the hip arthroplasty in vitro. The fourth part describes in vitro experimental tests of femoral components with cemented prostheses. The last part contains the conclusions and final remarks.

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Why is it important?

The monitoring of acoustic emission in evaluation structures integrity has the advantage to be done when the process is in charge, this does not happen in other non-destructives tests. That advantage is very important when one work with organic structures or organic substitution like in the study developed. In future work, given the constitution of the femoral component (different materials in thin layers) methods more stringent to locate sources should be used, not forgetting the fact that given the type of materials in question, the answer has a little number of AE events.