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Tribology of hydrogels for articular cartilage replacement
Křížová, Michaela ; Ranuša, Matúš (referee) ; Vrbka, Martin (advisor)
The bachelor's thesis deals with the description of the tribological properties of focal joint implants in the place of a cartilage defect. The application of focal implants is aimed at a group of younger patients who have to undergo surgery to repair damaged cartilage, but a total replacement is not suitable for them due to its lifetime. The contact of the focal implant and the opposite cartilage was simulated using metal samples and hydrogel, which has very similar properties to natural cartilage. For a possible comparison of values, a tribological measurement of the cartilage samples against the hydrogel was carried out. This pair serves as a model for defining friction in a healthy joint. The main task of this thesis was to determine the coefficient of friction of Ti6Al4V, Ti6Al4V+DLC, CoCrMo and cartilage against the hydrogel. The experiments were carried out using a tribometer in a pin-on-plate configuration. The Ti6Al4V alloy without coating and with DLC coating came out with the lowest coefficient of friction for both variants, almost identically 0.0526. Higher friction was measured for CoCrMo, but it differed from the titanium alloy to one-hundredth. On the contrary, the highest coefficient of friction was unexpectedly manifested in the cartilage samples, where the lowest friction was assumed. The error was due to poor selection of cartilage samples. The thesis simply describes the tribological behaviour of focal implants and the result is a material with the lowest coefficient of friction. The measurements performed could help further research into the issue of focal implants.
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