Lubrication and wear modelling of artificial hip joints: A review

The tribological performance of artificial hip joints is a critical issue for their success, because adverse tissue reaction to wear debris causes loosening and failure. Many studies on wear and lubrication of hip prostheses have been published in the last 10 years, mostly on experimental tests. Theoretical/numerical models have been proposed for investigating geometrical and material parameters also. This paper reviews recent literature on lubrication and wear models, stressing simplifying hypotheses, input data, methods and results. It is pointed out that actually lubrication and wear are described neglecting each other while new advanced models including both aspects could be helpful.