Notch Fatigue of Ultrahigh Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE) used in Total Joint Replacements
CPG researcher Adam Kozak was a co-author on a recently published article in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials. Along with co-authors from UC-Berkeley (Ansari, Gludovatz, Ritchie, and Pruitt), these researchers investigated the sensitivity of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) to fatigue when stress concentration sites are present in the form of notches. The authors investigated 3 formulations of UHMWPE commonly used in hip or knee implants today, and found that the sensitivity to crack propagation resulting from fatigue was more sensitive to microstructure, such as crosslink density, rather than specifics of the notch geometry.
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