Inhalt des Dokuments
Bio Contact Mechanics
The most common reason for a hip replacement is the wear of the cartilage in natural joints (osteoarthritis). During everyday movement, tangential loading of the joint can slowly wear the cartilage or lead to surface cracks. However, studies have shown that the cartilage can also regenerate itself, if the cells are supplied with nutrients. These nutrients are carried by the synovial fluid which can diffuse in the porous cartilage if a pressure gradient is present. It is assumed that oscillations in the normal loading of the joint have a pump effect on the synovial fluid that is beneficial for nutrient supply and, hence, cartilage regeneration.
A thorough understanding of the mechanisms that cause wear and
promote regeneration can lead to the development of new, more
conservative therapies in the earlier stages of osteoarthritis and may
thus help to avoid the often unsatisfactory and expensive joint
replacement.
This highly interdisciplinary research area
combining contact mechanics, biology and fluid mechanics is very young
and the research work at the Department of System Dynamics and
Friction Physics is just at the beginning. Our current work is focused
on the theoretical modeling of the contact problem and the coupled
diffusion problem including wear and growth laws based on the stress
distributions inside the cartilage. Thereby the cartilage mechanics
considering the porous and viscoelastic solid phase as well as the
fluid phase of the biphasic material is especially
challenging.
[1]
- © Springer
Basics of contact mechanics of biological tissues, in particular articular cartilage, are described in the book written by guest professor of our Department, I. Argatov, and professor of the Aberystwith University, G. Mishuris, Indentation Testing of Biological Materials, Springer, 2018:
www.springer.com/de/book/9783319785325 [2]
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