Study the effect of wear rate on impingement failure of an acetabular liner surface based on finite element analysis

In this study, correlation of wear inside of an acetabular liner surface (ALS) and damage on an acetabular liner rim (ALR) due to impingement effect are investigated. The analysis included evaluation of the macrostructure of the damage based on visual investigation and computer simulation analysis. A commercial finite element method ABAQUS software package is used to simulate local impingement on the ALR due to wear depth variations (wear rates) inside the ALS. Here, the wear depth is based on the data of wear experiment from literature. The von Mises stress and contact deformation on the ALR at impingement is presented. In addition, the initial impingement angle is also presented to show the correlation between the wear inside of the ALS and the angle of impingement occurrence. The results show that the existence of wear inside of the ALS can increase the damage of the ALR due to impingement effect.