Isoviscous elastohydrodynamic lubrication of circular point contacts with particular reference to metal-on-metal hip implants

Abstract

A full numerical analysis of elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) of circular point contacts was carried out in the present study under isoviscous conditions with particular reference to metal-on-metal artificial hip joints, using a modified Newton-Raphson method. It was found to be possible to incorporate directly the physiological conditions, representative of typical metal-on-metal hip implants under in-vivo walking or in-vitro simulator testing, in the present numerical solutions. The predicted minimum and central film thicknesses were compared favourably with those estimated from various formulae available in the literature. In particular, it was shown that both the minimum and the central film thickness expressions derived by Hamrock and Dowson were reasonably accurate for all the conditions considered in the present study.