Finite element analysis of fixed bone plates over fractured femur model

Abstract

The development of prosthetic bioimplants for fracture fixation using curved bone plates has been used as an established procedure for treatment in orthopedic. Here-in, we propose a novel curved bone plate fixation strategy to fix the designed biocompatible plates in different fracture models. Various biocompatible metallic biomaterials such as Ti-alloy (Ti-6Al-4V), stainless steel (SS 316L), and Co-alloy (Co-Cr) were created in SOLID works and used for the design of the bone plates. The typical fracture models (transverse and oblique) were created over a standard femur bone (models created using Materialize MIMIC/MAGIC) and two bone plates of similar materials were fixed side-by-side over the fractured femur using the screws made from Ti-6Al-4V. The finite element analysis (FEA) was carried out to evaluate the interface deformation, stress, and strain generated at the bone–bioimplant interface. The results from FEA demonstrated that the interface deformation and stress for a bone–bioimplant assembly are significantly reduced when natural anisotropic condition (functionally graded materials properties) of the human femur was well considered. Based on the analysis, Ti-6AL-4V and SS 316L were found as the best fit metallic biomaterials for the design and development of bone plate prosthetic bioimplants for fixation of an oblique fracture and transverse fracture respectively.

Keywords:

• Bone plates
• bioimplants
• biocompatible
• fractured femur
• finite element analysis

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the support from Electronics and ICT Academy of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India at Indian Institute of Information Technology Design and Manufacturing (IIITDM) Jabalpur for providing us the licensed use of MAGICS and MIMICS software (MI63589D) for all modeling works. The authors are grateful for the support from the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India for the Institute Teaching Assistantship to Mr. Harbhajan Ahirwar for conducting this research work as a part of his Ph.D. thesis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).