A stochastic model of damage accumulation in acrylic bone cement : application to failure modelling of cemented hip replacement

Abstract

Acrylic bone cement, used to fixate several forms of orthopaedic joint replacement prosthesis, has a variable fatigue resistance arising mainly from porosity. It is argued that deterministic modelling assumptions of homogeneous cement with constant fatigue strength lead to unrealistic conclusions regarding bone cement failure and that physical sources of variability should be included to better understand cement damage accumulation.