Pin on flat wear volume prediction of UHMWPE

against cp Ti for orthopedic applications

Handoko1,2,a, Suyitno2, Rini Dharmastiti3, Rahadyan Magetsari4
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vocational School, Universitas Gadjah Mada.
Jl. Yacaranda, Sekip Unit IV, Yogyakarta;
2,3
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada.
Jl. Grafika No 2, Yogyakarta;
4
Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology, Sardjito General Hospital
and Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta.
a)
handoko.dtm@ugm.ac.id

Abstract. Tribological assessment of orthopedic biomaterials requires a lot of testing time. Researchers must test the
biomaterials in millions of cycles at low frequency (1 Hz) to mimic the in vivo conditions. It is a problem because
product designs and developments could not wait longer for wear data to predict the lifetime of their products. The
problem can be solved with the use of computation techniques to model the wear phenomena and provide predicted data.
The aim of this research is to predict the wear volume of the commonly used ultra high molecular weight polyethylene
(UHMWPE) sliding against commercially pure titanium (cp Ti) in the unidirectional pin on flat tests. The 9 mm diameter
UHMWPE pin and cp Ti plate contact mechanics were modeled using Abaqus. Contact pressure was set at 3 MPa.
Outputs of the computations (contact pressure and contact area) were used to calculate the wear volume with Archard
law. A custom Python script was made to automate the process. The results were then compared with experimental data
for validations. The predicted data were in a good trend with a maximum numerical error of 3.19 %. Keywords: Pin on
flat, wear prediction, UHMWPE, cp Ti, orthopedic.

INTRODUCTION
Lower limb orthopedic prostheses are products designed to help people gain their mobility after an injury or a
severe bone illness. The products replace missing bone joints or support damaged bones. Each case has different
requirements for the biomaterials used by the implants. For the joint replacements at the hip and knee, the
biomaterials must highly wear resistant. The implants designed to support sliding between the biomaterials in the
lifetime of the patients. Researchers must test the wear behavior of biomaterials at the closest conditions with the in
vivo. It means, to test the materials at a frequency of 1 Hz for millions of cycles [1]. This is a problem for the
product design and development teams. It took a long time to obtain wear data and asses wear mechanisms at
various parameters. The next problem is the cost. Tribotester, hip and knee simulators, biomaterials and the biofluid
lubrication needed to mimic the in vivo conditions are very expensive for many institutions. The solution of the
problems is the use computational techniques for wear modeling and predictions. A carefully designed
computational model could deliver the required data faster with minimal numerical errors. A two hours numerical
computation is able to replace a two days test [2].
One of the famous computational methods is the finite element method. It predicts the behavior or response of a
model subjected to loads including a mechanical contact. Various finite element software with sophisticated contact
mechanic algorithm have been developed complement with the increased power of the hardware. Researchers use it
to model and predict wear phenomena of the biomaterials for decades. One of the biomaterial pairs commonly used
and modeled is the metal on polymer (MOP) [3]. Maxian et al were the first researchers successfully modeled the
wear of the pair for hip joint implants [4]. The parameters used for the wear computation were the contact pressure
and contact area between ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) and cobalt chrome (CoCr). The
researchers use contact mechanic algorithms from Abaqus commercial finite element software to compute those
parameters. The wear depth of the acetabular cup was predicted using Archard wear law. Since then, other
researchers have studied wear of MOP and other pairs as well as metal on metal (MOM). Most of the MOP
biomaterials predicted wear behaviors are CoCr and UHMWPE.
A type of the metallic biomaterials that promise the highest biocompatibility is the commercially pure titanium
(cp Ti). It is electrochemically passive. The material forms a protective layer uniformly at its surface in contact with
the human body fluids. This mechanism would reduce its corrosion rate, i.e. corrosion resistant [5]. It solved one of
the two metal implant’s main problems, wear and corrosion. Hence, the most important behavior of the titanium as a
biomaterial to study is its wear behavior. The importance increased specially for its usage in the orthopedic joint
implant applications. The wear volume of the softer material (UHMWPE at MOPs) should be kept minimum to
avoid toxic effects and mechanical loosening of the joints. In order to partially solve the wear problem, this research
is aimed to predict the wear of the cp Ti against UHMWPE. The computation models the tribological characteristics
of the MOP pair in a unidirectional pin on flat tribotester.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The biomaterials studied in this research are cp Ti and UHMWPE. The lubricant during the wear test was a
simulated body fluid (SBF) solution. Lubricant was composed of a 25 % v/v of bovine serum and distilled water. A
0.1 % w/v azide acid was added to reduce the bacterial growth during the test [1].
Experimental verification conducted with a pin on flat wear test method. The specimens are in form of metal
plates and polymer pins. The plates were the machined cast cp Ti with 55 mm long and 20 mm wide. The pins were
9 mm diameter and 20 mm long UHMWPE. The plates were wet polished into mirror finish with abrasive papers
and diamond pastes. The pins were also wet polished with a one-step 5,000-grid paper sands. The purpose of the
polishing processes is to mimic the biomaterials surface conditions similar to the in vivo smooth delicate bone
joints. The next step is the cleaning of the specimens in the distilled water with an ultrasonic cleaner. Wear tests
were conducted at a 1 Hz, 30 mm stroke reciprocating pin on flat. The contact pressure was set to 3 MPa.
Measurements of the weight loss of the pins were at every 200,000 cycles with an Ohaus Analytical Plus. The
weight scale has a precision up to 0.01 mg. The chosen interval is required to reduce protein precipitation. The
protein from the longer interval reduces wear and friction, too low compared to the in vivo [6]. Wear factor
computed with the Archard law after a million cycles was achieved.
Wear volume prediction conducted in two phases. The first phase is a contact mechanic computation with a finite
element method using Abaqus. The computing machine was a computer with a four cores processor and 8 gigabytes
of random access memory. The pin and plate models created with the same size as the experimental ones. Material
properties, i.e. elastic and plastic of the cp Ti and UHMWPE obtained from [7] and used for input data needed by
Abaqus. The plate was set as a rigid body due to the large difference of mechanical strength between titanium and
polymer (Table 1). The contact mechanic computations use a dynamic implicit algorithm. The reason to choose the
algorithm was the numerical accuracy appropriate for the biomaterials’ low sliding speed conditions. It has been
widely used in the prediction of contact pressure for artificial hip joints [8]. Contact parameters were set as sliding
contact with a penalty of friction coefficient. The contact pressure at the pin's surface was assumed uniform and set
into 3 MPa [1]. The contact mechanic computations did not use Hertzian analytical contact analysis for evaluation.
The pin and plate geometries was conformal which the Hertzian analysis is not suitable [9]. Friction coefficient of
the titanium and UHMWPE in a bovine solution is 0.11 as published by [10]. The second phase is the computation
of linear wear height and volumetric wear of the pin model. This phase uses Archard law for its core algorithm
(Equation 1). The calculations use the output of the first computation phase i.e., contact pressure, contact area and
sliding distance. The linear wear depth h was calculated with the equation below:

. . (1)

where k is a wear factor, p is the contact pressure and s is the sliding distance. Wear volume was calculated by
multiplying the linear wear depth with the contact area at every contact nodes. The contact pressure (denoted by
CPRESS) and contact area (denoted as CNAREA) were the two contact mechanics parameters taken from Abaqus.
A custom Python script was developed to read those parameters from the Abaqus output databases. Wear factor, k,
the key parameter of the wear computation was obtained from the experimental results. One million cycles of wear
volume computation were divided into several steps to score the same interval as in the experimental. It is not
realistic to update the computation at every single cycle due the time duration needed to complete the processes [11].
Linear wear heights computed at each step and used to update the coordinates of every contact nodes at the pin's
surface. The updated pin model is the input for the next step. These processes were repeated until the required total
cycles obtained (Fig. 1) similar to [12]. Total wear volume is a cumulative amount of the computed wear volume of
every step. Prediction errors are the differences between the predicted total wear volume and the experimental ones.

TABLE 1. The mechanical properties of cp Titanium and UHMWPE.

Poisson Modulus of Yield strength
Material Density Hardness
Ratio Elasticity (GPa) (MPa)
cp Titanium 4.5 0.34 110 485 80 (HRB)
UHMWPE 0.9 0.46 0.8 28 60 (ASTM D2240)

Start

Pre-processing:
Geometry, mesh, materials, load, boundary conditions,
contact parameters, steps and field output.

Processing: Geometry update with the

Contact algorithm (built in ABAQUS). calculated linear wear depth (h).

FE outputs:
Displacement, contact
pressure (CPRESS) and
contact area (CNAREA).

Post Processing:
Wear calculation (Archard Law)

Desired number No
of cycles
achieved?

Yes

End

FIGURE 1. The UHMWPE wear computation process.

The computation processes need to be optimized. The technique used to gain an optimum mesh design was a
series of mesh sensitivity tests. The purpose of the tests is to balance between accuracy and computation cost. The
parameter of accuracy is the value of the computed contact pressure. The reason to use contact pressure is the
situation in the pin on flat tribotester where contact area and sliding distance are constants. Analysis of the
computational cost uses the CPU time as the parameter to judge. CPU time is the time needed to complete the
computation of the contact mechanic algorithm. Mesh sensitivity tests conducted for the various pin models from
748 elements to 25,812 elements (Table 2). Results show that the pin model with 6,216 elements (Mesh 3) is the
optimum mesh size. The finest mesh design (Mesh 4) costs more than eight times longer than the chosen optimum
mesh size.

TABLE 2. Mesh properties used in the sensitivity test.

Element size Number of Number of Contact CPU Time
Mesh
(mm) nodes elements Nodes (seconds)
Mesh 1 0.679855 918 748 51 255
Mesh 2 0.390636 2,090 1,764 95 475
Mesh 3 0.157032 6,974 6,216 313 1,565
Mesh 4 0.058317 27,916 25,812 997 4,985

3.5 1.0

Calculated wear in 1 million cycle

Average contact pressure (MPa)
Pin
3.0 0.9
Plate model model
(rigid body) 2.5
0.8
2.0

(mm3)
0.7
1.5
0.6
1.0
Average contact pressure
0.5 0.5
Calculated volumetric wear
0.0 0.4
51 95 313 997
Number of contact nodes
(a) (b)

FIGURE 2. (a) A simpler situation of the contact mechanics computation model, (b) Mesh sensitivity test results

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Unidirectional wear test on the UHMWPE pin and cp titanium plate lubricated with simulated body fluid was
conducted. From the experimental data, wear factor k was found equal to 1.28 x 10-7 mm3/N.m. The value was close
with the wear factor published by [13] at k = 1.2 x 10-7 mm3/N.m. This data was then used to compute the predicted
wear volume. The trend of the predicted wear data is in a good agreement with the experimental data (Fig. 3). The
predicted data were slightly overestimated. Computational results show that the classical Archard wear model is still
capable to predict the wear of polymer in the unidirectional pin on flat wear test setup. Numerical errors were found
up to 3.19 %. The trend of the UHMWPE wear volume was a cumulative linear. It is similar to the recent research
with the same polymer materials [14]. This trend is caused by two factors. First, the UHMWPE material exhibits
linear elastic behavior up to its yield limit [15]. Second, worn surface at the plastic zone due to the plastic strain
consists of a thin layer compared to the overall thickness of the pin. It is different than for example, the behavior of
the deflected engineering materials. The majority of the pin's body can be assumed elastic and undeformed. Hence,
the worn material tends to be generated with a linear increment, especially for continuous cyclic movements.
The wear tests show a low wear rate phenomenon of the UHMWPE. It can be explained by the tendency of the
molecular chain orientations of the polymer at its surface to become parallel to the sliding direction. The mechanism
makes the polymer stiffer and less ductile [16]. The mechanical property of UHMWPE shows the similar trend.
Plastic strain hardening mechanisms occur [7]. The ability of the polymer especially at its surface to resist plastic
strain during sliding was increased.
Wear is a complex problem. Many parameters, physical and thermal contribute to the wear mechanism. Among
those parameters, the contact mechanics, the mechanical and thermal properties of materials and the lubricant were
believed as the most important contributors. In order to reduce the complexity, this research had set many
parameters as constants. Those parameters were contact pressure, sliding speed, temperature and lubricant
properties. The contact pressure, sliding speed and sliding distance at the tribotester were mostly constants. It is also
safe to assume that the property of the lubricant is relatively stable because the tests were at room temperature
conditions. The temperature variations have no effect to the property of the UHMWPE. The wear computations
were then much simpler. The processes depend only on fewer parameters. The parameters are the contact mechanics
and the properties of the biomaterials. Other tribological parameters were represented by the wear factor data (k).

0.8

UHMWPE wear volume (mm3) 0.7

0.6
0.5
0.4 Experiment

0.3 Prediction
0.2
0.1
0
0 200 400 600 800 1,000 Cycle (x 103)

FIGURE 3. Predicted results and experimental validation.

The surface of the cp Ti was worn even though its mechanical strength is much higher than the polyethylene.
The cause of this phenomenon is the debris generated by the worn titanium oxide. The debris was circulated during
the test and degraded the titanium counterface by mean of scratches as presented in Fig. 4 (a) and Fig. 4 (b).
Experimental measurements show a reduced weight of the metal due to this phenomenon (Fig. 4 (c)). The weight
reduction of the plate was 0.068 % for a million cycles. It is the same amount with the reduced weight of the pin
which was 0.067%. Unfortunately there is no wear model available to use to predict the worn volume of the harder
materials. The Archard model is only suitable for the softer material. It must be ideal to calculate the worn volume
of the both materials with a coupled computation technique if the required wear models are available. A recent novel
approach based on similar coupled technique had been developed by [17] but limited only on the wear of the same
two materials (metal on metal).

24.22
Weight of the cp Ti plate (gram)

24.21
R² = 0.923
24.20
24.19
24.18
24.17
100 μm 24.16

1 mm 24.15
0 200 400 600 800 1,000
Cycle (x 103)
(a) (b) (c)

FIGURE 4. Worn surfaces of the titanium counterface. (a) 10 X optical magnification, (b) 100 X optical magnification with the
shown eroded surface and (c) Weight reduction of the titanium plate.
 CONCLUSION
Wear mechanism is a complex problem. Many parameters must be set constant to reduce its complexity. A
simpler setup situation is needed by the computational technique to minimize errors. The computational wear
prediction requires repetitive processes. It is heavily depend on the contact mechanics algorithm and wear factor
data obtained by experiments. The unidirectional sliding wear volume of UHMWPE against cp titanium plate was
successfully predicted with Archard wear model. The numerical errors were found 3.19 % maximum.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is supported by a postgraduate scholarship and funding from the Ministry of Research, Technology
and Higher Education, Republic of Indonesia. The authors thank to the Faculty Veterinary and Faculty of Pharmacy,
Universitas Gadjah Mada for their supports of serum preparations and precise equipments.

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