ABSTRACT
The medial tilt and subsidence in total ankle arthroplasty, as two significant concerns of the ankle replacement system, has attracted significant attention. However, little research has been done on the contact between the bones and the talar component. In this chapter, a three-dimensional (3D) finite element model of contact between the bone and the talar component is developed, in which the cancellous bone is assumed to be perfectly plastic and its material properties, including the Young's modulus and yield stress, are interpolated from the experimental data using the multidimensional radial-basis interpolation. The contact between the bones and the talar component is assumed to be always bonded due to the bone growth after the implant surgery. The computational results indicate that the variation of material properties through the cancellous bone causes the medial tilting of the talar component in the directions from the high to the low Young's modulus.
