| With traffic accidents, traumas, and aging society coming, there are more and more people needing to receive joint replacement treatments, moreover, which proves a lower -age tendency. After the joint replacement surgery, poor osseointegration of bone-implant interface could result in the fretting loosening. Furthermore, body fluid plays an important role in the tribological behaviors of joint friction pairs, which would cause those friction and wear process more complex in comparison with engineering friction pairs. Understanding the tribological behaviors of human bone and joint prostheses would help design new artificial joint with excellent resistance against lessening.The tangential fretting friction and wear behaviors of human femur cortical bone have been tested under ball-on-flat contact using a reciprocating apparatus. All the tests were conducted under dry condition and under the lubrication of Ringer's solution. Various analyses by using microhardness tester, profilometer, optical microscopy, laser confocal scanning microscopy (LCSM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), have been performed. Main conclusions are drawn as follows:1. Under the lubrication of Ringer's solution, the friction coefficient of cortical bone fluctuated but did not increase obviously before 10 000 cycles as the number of cycles increased. After 10 000 cycles, the friction coefficient of cortical bone increases significantly with the number of cycles.3. The wear width and depth of cortical bone increased with the number of cycles under the lubrication of Ringer's solution. Moreover, the wear morphology changed gradually from significantly ploughing effect into bulk delamination.4. The cortical bone exhibited similar wear mechanism under the lubrication of Ringer's solution and under dry condition. More wear particles were observed on the worn surface of cortical bone under the dry condition than under the lubrication of Ringer's solution. |
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