Author(s)

Victor A. González-Mora, Michael Hoffmann, Rien Stroosnijder, F. Javier Gil

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Wear tests were carried out to study the effect of the hardness and roughness with various counterface materials on UHMWPE wear behaviour. The materials used as counterfaces were based on varieties of CoCrMo: 1) forged (hand-polished) CoCrMo, 2) forged (mass-finished) CoCrMo, and 3) cast (mass-finished) CoCrMo. Additionally, two coatings were proposed: 1) a CoCrMo coating applied to the forged CoCrMo alloy by means of physical vapour deposition (PVD), and 2) a ZrO₂ coating applied to the forged CoCrMo alloy by means of plasma-assisted chemical vapour deposition (PACVD). The reciprocating pin-on-flat (RPOF) device for pin-on-disk wear testing was used for this study. The worn surfaces were observed using optical, atomic force and scanning electron microscopes.

Wear; Artificial Joints; CoCrMo; Hardness; Roughness

González-Mora, V. , Hoffmann, M. , Stroosnijder, R. and Gil, F. (2011) The role of hardness and roughness on the wear of different CoCrMo counterfaces on UHMWPE for artificial joints. Journal of Biomedical Science and Engineering, 4, 651-656. doi: 10.4236/jbise.2011.410081.