• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
• /
• 2016.11a
• /
• pp.117-117
• /
• 2016

Total ankle replacement (TAR) is a visible option in the surgical treatment of degenerative or inflammatory diseases of ankle joint. it is attributed to the current TAR which has improvements in surgical technique, uncemented implant fixation and minimally constrained articulation. In the clinical result, they can show promised surgical result when compared to earlier attempts in TAR. However, TAR is still not as successful as total knee replacement (TKR) or total hip replacement (THR), it needs to be note that there are limitations in concerning of long term performance of TAR, the high failure rate still associated with wear of the PE (polyethylene) component that has related with their material property and surface roughness. The aim of this study was to introduce the tribology characteristics of total ankle joint prosthesis with one of TDR model which was fabricated to try multi-axis wear test as a region of motion in ankle joint. The wear specimen of TDR was prepared with Ti-6Al-4V alloy and UHMWPE (ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene) for tibia-talus and bearing component, respectively. A wear test was carried out using a Force 5 (AMTI, Massachusetts, US) wear simulator which can be allowed to move in three axis to flexion-extension ($+3^{\circ}{\sim}-6^{\circ}$), internal-external axial rotation (${\pm}5^{\circ}$), as well as sinusoidal compressive load (1.6 kN, R=10). All tests were performed following standard ISO 14243, wear rate was calculated with weight loss of UHMWPE bearing while the specimen has tested at certain cycles. As based on the preliminary results, wear rate of UHMWPE bearing was $7.9{\times}10^{-6}mg/cycles$ ($R^2=0.86$), calculated loss weight until $10^7cycles$ was 79 mg, respectively.