Analysis of hip prosthesis designs using computationalstructural methods

Total hip replacement (THR) is widely used nowadays to relieve patients from pain due to arthritis or fracture. A good hip prosthesis design leads to extended life of the joint and patient comfort. There are several mechanical (structural) aspects to the design of the prostheses. In vitro testing is costly and time consuming. In order to reduce the design time, finite element analysis (FEA) tools are used to simulate the prostheses and the joint. In FEA, the prosthesis is subjected to various loads and constraints to study the response under various steady positions and gait cycles. This paper showcases an FEAbased optimization process for designing a hip joint implant for maximum patient comfort quantified by the relative movement (sliding distance) between the implant surface and the bone tissues. A threedimensional model of the adult hip joint is generated from a MRI scan image and simulated for finding the contact pressure and sliding distance between the implant surface and bone cavity. The entire procedure has been developed using the ANSYS Workbench platform.