• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.29-35
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• 2012

The treatments for spinal canal stenosis are radicular cyst removal, spine fusion, and implantation of an artificial intervertebral disc. Artificial intervertebral discs have been most widely used since the mid-2000s. The study of artificial intervertebral discs has been focused on the analysis of the axial rotation, lateral bending, the degrees of freedom of the disc, and flexion-extension of the vertebral body. The issue of fatigue failure years after the surgery has arisen as a new problem. Hence, study of artificial intervertebral discs must be focused on the fatigue failure properties and increased durability of the sliding core. A finite element model based on an in the artificial intervertebral disc (SB Charit$\acute{e}$ III) was produced, and the influence of the radius of curvature and the change in the coefficient of friction of the sliding core on the von-Mises stress and contact pressure was evaluated. Based on the results, new artificial intervertebral disc models (Models-I, -II, and -III) were proposed, and the fatigue failure behavior of the sliding core after a certain period of time was compared with the results for SB Charit$\acute{e}$ III.