In silico wear prediction in arthroplasty considering synovial lubrication

Nowadays, the patient group undergoing total arthroplasty includes younger and more active people who require a broad range of motion and a longer service lifetime for the replaced joints. Wear is still one of the main issues affecting joint prostheses endurance, causing loosening and, eventually, implants failure. Actual in-vitro wear tests (simulators) have a long duration, are very expensive and does not take into account all the possible daily activities of the patients. In this scenario the possibility to use accurate in-silico tribological and dynamical models of the (bio) tribo-systems under investigation allows to overcome the actual testing procedures and could contribute as tool for a more and more accurate tribological design of human prostheses. The talk is devoted to give an overview of the last research results, underlining some open problems in contact mechanics, numerical stress-strain analysis, musculoskeletal multibody modelling, synovial lubrication modelling (boundary/mixed, hydro-dynamic and EHD), with the aim to establish future research cooperation with the Colleagues attending this International Simposium.