ABSTRACT
During the cement curing phase of a total joint replacement, the material undergoes a process of polymerisation, which causes the temperature within the cement to rise to over 100°C. This temperature increase can destroy the bone tissue adjacent to the cement. The extent to which bone cells are destroyed will be influenced by the temperature within the bone and the exposure time. A numerical model for the prediction of cement polymerisation and thermal bone necrosis has been developed and verified in order to examine the influence of cement thickness on the extent of thermal necrosis. The prediction of thermal necrosis was formulated as a damage model in which the normalised damage parameter was written as a function of the temperature history and the exposure time. The numerical model was implemented in two plain strain finite element models of the reconstructed proximal femur with minimum cement thickness values of 1.5 and 2.5mm.
