Fatigue failure in the cement mantle of a simplified acetabular replacement model

Although the role of fatigue failure in aseptic loosening of cemented total hip replacements has been extensively studied in femoral components, studies of fatigue failure in cement mantle of acetabular replacements have yet to be reported, despite that the long-term failure rate in the latter is about three times that of femoral components. Part of the reason may be that a complex pelvic bone structure does not land itself readily for a 2D representation as that of a femur. In this work, a simple multilayer model has been developed to reproduce the stress distributions in the cement mantle of an acetabular replacement from a plane strain finite element pelvic bone model. The experimental multilayer model was subjected to cyclic loading up to peak hip contact force during normal walking. Radial fatigue cracks were observed in the vicinity of the maximum tangential and compressive stresses, as predicted by the FE models. Typical fatigue striations were also observed on the fracture surfaces post cyclic testing. The results were examined in the context of retrieval studies, 3D FE analysis and in vitro experimental results using full-sized hemi-pelvic bone models.