Polymerisation stress modelling in acrylic bone cement

Fatigue failure of the cement mantle has been proposed as one of the failure processes contributing to aseptic loosening of cemented joint replacements. It has also been suggested that fatigue failure is dramatically accelerated by residual stress generated during the cement polymerisation process. Previous computational models of the polymerisation process have investigated only the latter part of polymerisation by assuming both instantaneous hardening of the material (a stress locking point) and that all residual stress results from thermal shrinkage after this stress locking point. In this study, finite element models which use the local degree of polymerisation to calculate material properties and shrinkage have been used to predict residual stresses in two models of total hip replacement cement mantles. Results indicate that the final value of cement mantle stress may not be the highest stresses that the cement is subjected to during the polymerisation process. Two models are presented, a 2-dimensional model, which was adapted from a similar model in the literature (Lennon and Prendergast, 2002) and a 3-dimensional concentric-cylinders model. In both cases a chemical kinetics model was used to predict the progress of the polymerisation reaction and a second linear model used to predict cement mechanical properties and density, and so stress generation and volume change, over time. There was good agreement of the results of the 2D model with its counterpart in the literature. For the 3D model, the final residual stress magnitudes and patterns showed good agreement with similar physical and computational models in the literature.