Development of an additively-manufactured functionally-graded expandable implant via the application of the adaptive response surface method: feasibility study on intramedullary humerus nail

Abstract

The paper introduces the concept of the rational design of a deployable humeral intramedullary nail plug based on a honeycomb structure used for the surgical treatment of humeral shaft fractures. The concept serves for to restore the axial alignment of bone fragments and to maintain stability via bone-nail friction and locking screws. The design nail plug was gained by optimisation process the Latin Hypercube Sampling Design algorithm and Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm. It was shown that we can use statistical shape function combined by 3 D printing for designing of a new rationally designed implants.

Keywords:

• Expandable implant
• intramedullary humerus nail
• adaptive response surface method
• additively-manufactured

Disclosure statement

The manuscript has not previously been published in print or electronic form and is not under consideration by any other publication. The authors declare that there are no ethical problems or conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the grant of the Masaryk Hospital in Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic (IGA-KZ-2019-1-10).