Optimal Design of Ceramic Based Hip Implant Composites Using Hybrid AHP-MOORA Approach

Area of Science:

• Biomaterials Science
• Materials Engineering
• Orthopedic Implants

Background:

• Designing effective hip implant composite materials requires balancing conflicting physical, mechanical, and wear properties.
• Suboptimal design can lead to premature failure of hip implants, necessitating advanced selection tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and apply a hybrid decision-making tool for selecting optimal hip implant composite materials.
• To evaluate various ceramic composites for their suitability in hip implant applications.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication and evaluation of hip implant composite materials with varying proportions of magnesium oxide, zirconium oxide, chromium oxide, silicon nitride, and aluminium oxide.
• Assessment of physicomechanical properties including density, hardness, elastic modulus, wear, and fracture toughness.
• Application of a hybrid Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Multiple Objective Optimisation on the basis of Ratio Analysis (MOORA) for multi-criteria decision-making.

Main Results:

• Composite properties like density, hardness, elastic modulus, and wear were composition-dependent.
• A composite containing 83 wt.% aluminium oxide and 10 wt.% zirconium oxide showed high hardness, elastic modulus, and fracture toughness with low wear.
• The AHP-MOORA approach identified a specific composite formulation (83 wt.% Al2O3, 10 wt.% ZrO2, 5 wt.% Si3N4, 3 wt.% MgO, 1.5 wt.% Cr2O3) as optimal.

Conclusions:

• A hybrid AHP-MOORA decision-making framework effectively addresses the challenge of selecting optimal hip implant composites.
• The identified optimal composite composition offers superior physicomechanical and wear properties for hip implant applications.
• Sensitivity analysis confirmed the robustness of the ranking for the selected composite material.