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Failure Analysis of Prematurely Failed Hip Joint Implant Inside the Femur Bone

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Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Fracture Fatigue and Wear (FFW 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering ((LNME))

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Abstract

The hip joint implant once put inside the femur is expected to deliver an average life span of ~25 years. Its premature failure is highly painful to the patient as for the removal of stem cemented inside the femur; the bone at times needs to be slit for the implant removal and replacement. The visual observations of implant retrieved after failure revealed no signs of any surface wear and tear or any surface cracking even after staying inside the body for almost 10 years. The stereo microscopic examination of fractured surface revealed some serration marks apart from rough and flat regions particularly in the upper broken part of implant. Optical emission spectroscopy divulged the composition to deviate from standard SS 316L grade. The optical microstructure showed presence of almost equiaxed austenite grains. The measured hardness was 81 HRB (viz. < 1 HRC) and bend strength was 360 MPa vis-à-vis normal human bone hardness of ~20 HRC and bend strength of ~110 MPa. The implant showed no cracking even after bending at 150°. The SEM analysis revealed occurrence of many surface and sub-surface defects such as inclusions, pin hole porosities and corrosion pits. EDS mapping showed inhomogeneous distribution of chromium. The presence of fatigue failure got confirmed on revelation of features such as serration marks, cleavage and dimples. The cracks most apparently got initiated at multiple locations and progressed inside the femoral stem.

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Acknowledgements

(1) Dr. Jagdish Panse, Chief Orthopedic Surgeon, Inlaks Budhrani Hospital, Pune, (2) Dr. S. B. Sarkar, Ex. Prof, IIT, Kharagpur and (3) Mr. Abhijeet Bhopale, FE-SEM Lab, COEP, Pune.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Metallurgy and Materials Science, College of Engineering, Pune, Pune, 411005, India

    S. P. Butee & Kaustubh Kambale

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  1. S. P. Butee
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  2. Kaustubh Kambale
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Correspondence to S. P. Butee .

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  1. Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Ghent University , Ghent, Belgium

    Magd Abdel Wahab

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Butee, S.P., Kambale, K. (2019). Failure Analysis of Prematurely Failed Hip Joint Implant Inside the Femur Bone. In: Abdel Wahab, M. (eds) Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Fracture Fatigue and Wear. FFW 2018. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0411-8_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0411-8_26

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-0410-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-0411-8

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