Topological optimization in hip prosthesis design

With particular interest on total hip arthroplasty (THA), optimization of orthopedic prostheses is employed in this work to minimize the probability of implant failure or maximize prosthesis reliability. This goal is often identified with the reduction of stress concentrations at the interface between bone and these devices. However, aseptic loosening of the implant is mainly influenced by bone resorption phenomena revealed in some regions of the femur when a prosthesis is introduced. As a consequence, bone resorption appears due to stress shielding, that is to say the decrease of the stress level in the implanted femur caused by the significant load carrying of the prosthesis due to its higher stiffness. A maximum stiffness topological optimization-based (TO) strategy is utilized for non-linear static finite element (FE) analyses of the femur–implant assembly, with the goal of reducing stress shielding in the femur and to furnish guidelines for re-designing hip prostheses. This is accomplished by employing an extreme accuracy for both the three-dimensional reconstruction of the femur geometry and the material properties maps assigned as explicit functions of the local densities.