Design of a biomimetic polymer-composite hip prosthesis

A new biomimetic composite hip prosthesis (stem) was designed to obtain properties similar to those of the contiguous bone, in particular stiffness, to allow normal loading of the surrounding femoral bone. This normal loading would reduce excessive stress shielding, known to result in bone loss, and micromotions at the bone-implant interface, leading to aseptic prosthetic loosening. The design proposed is based on a hollow substructure made of hydroxyapatite-coated, continuous carbon fiber (CF) reinforced polyamide 12 (PA12) composite with an internal soft polymer-based core. Different composite configurations were studied to match the properties of host tissue. Nonlinear three-dimensional analysis of the hip prosthesis was carried out using a three-dimensional finite element bone model based on the composite femur. The performance of composite-based hip and titanium alloy-based (Ti-6Al-4V) stems embedded into femoral bone was compared. The effect of core stiffness and ply configuration was also analyzed. Results show that stresses in composite stem are lower than those in Ti stem, and that the femoral bone implanted with composite structure sustains more load than the one implanted with Ti stem. Micromotions in the composite stem are significantly smaller than those in Ti stem over the entire bone-implant surface because of the favorable interfacial stress distribution.